Alvaro Bautista has dominated in the last two years in SBK, but has never found continuity in the top class. The broadside is very poisonous.
It’s a complicated moment for Alvaro Bautista after two years in which he had practically no rivals. Only a heroic Toprak Razgatlioglu managed, at times, to keep up with his rival on the Yamaha. This year the music has changed slightly due to a rule that tried to limit the Spanish centaur.
The number 1, in fact, was burdened with extra kg and was no longer able to exploit his feather weight to dominate the races as he once did. Alvaro Bautista has decided to move to the Superbike World Championship in 2019 after a very long journey in the Motorcycle World Championship. As a child prodigy he won the World Championship in 125 in 2006. A lifetime ago but for the 1984 class everything changed with his arrival in the top class, where he didn’t get more than 3 podiums.
It was a premier class not even remotely comparable to the current one. It was filled with pure talent and beyond the technical values, a rider like Bautista would not have gone beyond fifth and sixth place in the ranking as he achieved, respectively, in 2012 and 2013. With champions like Valentino Rossi, Nicky Hayden, Daniel Pedrosa , Casey Stoner, Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Marquez could never have won. In fact, Bautista never even came close to a single success from 2010 to 2018.
Bautista’s bitter comment
In 2023 he returned to the saddle of a Desmosedici for the Malaysian stage and finished the SR in twenty-second position and the GP in seventeenth. In the statements released on the site GPOne.com, the Spaniard underlined that many think that SBK is easy because there have been several riders who moved from MotoGP to SBK and immediately achieved results.
“I believe that SBK is simply a different championship – stated Bautista – Unfortunately in MotoGP I didn’t demonstrate that with a good team and a good bike I could have aspired to better results“. In 9 years in the top class the two-time Superbike World Champion he raced with the official Suzuki and Aprilia teams, as well as with Gresini and Aspar. Three third places in his time with Honda were his best finishes.
