Disappointment for Bautista with lonely 7th at team’s home race

Alvaro Bautista’s hopes for a better race result than his qualifying position were met but only in part today as he moved up one place to take seventh.

Despite showing a good race pace throughout free practice here and even in the warm-up this morning Bautista was not able to make the progress he had expected from the third row of the grid and his pace during the race was a couple of tenths off his true potential.

Alvaro Bautista (7th) “We expected a different result than this, because we were competitive during practice and in the warm-up this morning, but during the race I was struggling to get the bike turning into the corners, which is strange because we didn’t touch the setting. Our pace was slower than practice and that’s not normal, so it’s important we understand why this happened to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s a shame, because we had the potential today to fight for fifth or even fourth place. This is racing and now we have to put the result behind us and concentrate on the next race in Spain. I am disappointed for the team, because it’s their home race. We were on the podium here last year and I would have loved to give them another great result.”

Fausto Gresini “I am disappointed that we haven’t been able to turn our pace here at our home race into a good result. Unfortunately we had problems at the most important moment of the weekend and we didn’t come out with the result we were expecting. We will try to work out the reason why this happened to make sure we don’t have a similar situation in future.”

Source: Gresini Racing