Motegi: Bautista Happy With 7th, But Still Looking To Improve

It was a really good result for Alvaro Bautista today at Motegi. Not the best of starts though as he was boxed in on the first corner and relegated to 12th place at the end of the first lap, from ninth on the grid.

He then set about making his way through the field and just after half distance he had caught and passed Marco Melandri for eighth. The next rider in Alvaro’s sight was team-mate Capirossi and as he chased him down for what was looking to be an exciting inter-team battle in the closing stages, Capirossi visibly slowed and went into the gravel on lap 22. As Bati benefitted from Capirossi’s sad demise and moved into seventh, he tried to make up the distance to the top six, and although he ended the race with top-five position lap-times, he was just unable to close down on Marco Simoncelli with the few laps that were remaining.

Today’s race was held in warm, but overcast conditions and was watched at trackside by just over 40,000 very colourful and exuberant fans. Ducati’s Casey Stoner took his second win in succession, with World Championship leader Jorge Lorenzo in fourth.

Rizla Suzuki now travels immediately to Malaysia for the next round of the season, which will be held next Sunday at the Sepang International Circuit near Kuala Lumpur.

Álvaro Bautista:
“It was not a good, but also not a bad result! We improved on our position from the last few races, but I had a problem in the first few laps with the rear tyre because it was just not getting enough temperature in it, this made it difficult to follow the others riders. After three or four laps I got back into my rhythm and saw that I could keep a similar distance and time to the front group, but the gap was too big and I wasn’t able to catch them. I am happy with the result and the whole team has worked very hard all weekend, but we need to improve on what happened in the first few laps, because in this category those laps are very important. I hope that in Malaysia we can make steps with this and we’ll try to be in the position that I think we should be – which at the moment is in the top-six.”