Alvaro Bautista takes an excellent eighth at Jerez

The Spanish Grand Prix had a home winner on Sunday, as Marc Márquez took victory at Jerez. Márquez, Dani Pedrosa, Jorge Lorenzo and Andrea Dovizioso seemed the only four candidates for the podium until, at the start of the last third of the race, contact between Pedrosa, Lorenzo and Dovizioso resulted in all three crashing and Márquez escaping for the win.

In second place, Johann Zarco had a slight advantage over a group of four, formed by Andrea Iannone, Danilo Petrucci, Valentino Rossi and Jack Miller. Iannone would take the final podium spot. Márquez thus regains the series lead, with 70 points out of a possible 100 and ahead of Zarco and Maverick Viñales -seventh today.

Álvaro Bautista had stated on Saturday that he had found his best feeling with the Ducati GP17 to date, and he corroborated this with an a race full of overtaking moves and an eighth place finish. The Angel Nieto Team rider started from twentieth on the grid and was able to recover ground to take his best result of the year.

8th Álvaro Bautista:
“I am very happy, more because of the feeling I’ve had on the bike since FP4 than with the eighth place. I think we have found the way forward and we are going to go in the right direction from now on. Whenever we tried to improve our main problem, the lack of contact with the asphalt from the rear made it difficult. Yesterday we decided to make a complete change to try to solve the front end issue, and I felt more comfortable with the bike, able to be better positioned coming out of the corners and more confident. I felt that I was riding the bike, rather than it riding me. On the final laps I fought with Maverick for seventh position, but at one point I missed a gear and wasn’t able to defend.”