Bautista deeply frustrated with Estoril race and narrowly missing Top 10 again

Rizla Suzuki’s Álvaro Bautista just missed out on 10th place at the Portuguese Grand Prix today as the rain that had plagued the race weekend finally relented to allow a dry race.

Starting from 14th on the grid, Bautista got a good start and by lap five he had moved up in 10th position. As the race wore on he got involved in a battle with Hector Barbera and Hiroshi Aoyama, which saw the three swap places regularly. Bautista fought to the line, but was just unable to get past Barbera in the closing metres and finished a mere 0.187 seconds behind his countryman to claim 11th position.

Today’s weather was a marked contrast from what had previously been experienced at the Portuguese circuit as the heavy rain that had caused the cancellation of yesterdays qualifying gave way to windy, but sunny conditions. World title holder Jorge Lorenzo produced a champion’s performance in front of a crowd of just over 40,000 to win the race by over eight seconds from his nearest rival.

Rizla Suzuki will now travel directly to Valencia in Spain for the final round of the season next weekend, with both riders hoping to put today’s difficult race firmly behind them and finish the season on a positive note.

Álvaro Bautista: “I feel very disappointed because I just didn’t expect this result here. I know the weekend has been very strange, because we only rode in dry conditions in the race, but before I came here I thought we would have a good performance. When I started the race I quickly realised I couldn’t get a good rhythm because I didn’t seem to have much grip in the front or rear tyres and on the straights I also had a problem with the bike being very unstable – I even had to close the throttle sometimes because I couldn’t control the bike properly. I fought for a position in the top-10, but I also had a bit of a problem with braking hard and that made it very difficult to overtake other riders. I hope that next week we can finish the season with a good result to make up for today’s disappointment.”

Paul Denning – Team Manager:
“Going straight into the race with no dry practice at all was always going to throw up some interesting results, but unfortunately we definitely needed some dry running to get the bike working properly. The biggest problem for both riders today was stability, which was not helped by the strong cross winds down the main straight, but our competitors didn’t seem to have the same trouble at all. Álvaro fought hard – as always – but we couldn’t give him a good enough tool for the job today and we’ll be hoping that we can improve things in Valencia and he can finish his season as strongly as his potential has shown in the last few races.

Source: Rizla Suzuki MotoGP