Alvaro Bautista on the new season: “The aim is to fight for the podium in some races”
After enjoying his well-deserved off-season with a sunny trip to Punta Cana and later a short ski holiday, Alvaro Bautista has finally made two more public appearances yesterday, both as honorary guest, giving the present journalist the opportunity to ask a few questions about his MotoGP career.
Before he joined fellow racer Santiago Barragan [currently riding in the Spanish Championship] in the evening as a honorary guest to open a restaurant in Badajoz, wonderfully named “Laguna Seca”, he attended an award ceremony for children who created the best Christmas Cards for the Organización Impulsora de Discapacitados [A support organization for people with disabilities] where he handed out trophies to the kids, stating that “these kind of events with children always motivate me”. As reported earlier he’s also going to join the Riders for Health Foundation in their Experience Africa trip in Zaire later this year which he was more than happy to confirm to the press.
Talking about his MotoGP career he mused that he expects it to be a good year for him and that he aims to “use the lessons I’ve learned to correct the errors I’ve made in my rookie year”.
At the moment he is focused on his physical training to prepare for the first test in Sepang in only a few weeks time and the first race of the season in Qatar on March 20th.
“If you love what you do and have a good time doing it, you’ll get good results. Last year I had two fifth places and I think this year the goal is to try and fight for podium positions in some races and then see where we end up.”
But before the season even starts, he is aware that “it’s necessary to work well in the preseason, so we can go into the first race at 100%, the bike as much as myself”.
Aside from the experience of his first year in the class which he can use in 2011, he knows he can also count on other things this year: “I know the bike, I know what I need to try in order to improve. And this year I’m the only rider in the team, so I’ll have a lot of work to do in the preseason. I’m highly motivated and eager, hoping that the injuries spare me, not like last year, and will try to improve my results from last season.”
Being the only rider of the team has more positive than negative aspects, he claims: “All the work from the factory is directly for me, but I also have more work to do than before and need much more time to develop the bike. Sincerely I see more positive than negative in it and I hope the factory is as much involved as it was last year and that they continue developing the bike to try and make it more competitive”.
Reviewing his his inaugural season in the big class, it was clearly marked and divided by the bad shoulder and collarbone injury he suffered from a motocross accident after only the second race and a subsequent horror highsider in Le Mans. “I dragged that injury along for many races, because it was at the time when we had a lot of immediately consecutive rounds. Then the bike worked better at some tracks and was difficult to handle at others, so I was a bit hampered by those circumstances. But I’m happy with the races where more or less everything worked well and we were able to fight at a good level. It is not an easy category, there’s a very high level of riders, but step by step I’ve learned with this bike and in the end we finished pretty well. I’m sure if I’ll be a bit luckier with injuries this year, then we can do it a little better.”
Looking at the high amount of severe injuries MotoGP riders suffered in 2010, including Valentino Rossi, Dani Pedrosa, Randy De Puniet and Hiroshi Aoyama, Alvaro sees it as a byproduct of doing what they love that they have to accept to continue. “Injuries are something we have to live with, nobody likes that, but you never know when it might happen. I’m sure that this year, at least, I can get up to my rhythm without having to wait to recover from an injury”.
Delving further into his experiences in the new class, the former 125cc world champion declared that the rider who surprised him the most was Casey Stoner. “He is the only rider who can go very fast from the first lap and with these bike you have to be very careful with the tyres, because it takes some time for them to warm up. He has probably been the one who surprised me the most, just by how he can go so fast in the first laps”.
And finally, asked about Spain being at the pinnacle of motorcycle racing at the moment with all three world championship titles in 2010 going to Spaniards, Bautista sees pros and cons in the situation: “It’s great, but there is too much competition among fellow countrymen. When you achieve something good, you remain a bit in the shadows, because there are still riders who are better. But it is important that the Spanish bike racing is up there, because it means we have some good talents here. And the riders in front, I’ve fighted with them before and I’ve also won against them, so why shouldn’t I win against them in this class.”
Sources: La Tribuna de Talavera, Twitter Alvaro Bautista, EFE, Que.es
Photo Credit: La Tribuna de Talavera / Manu Reino [top], Que.es / Casimiro Moreno [bottom]
