Alvaro Bautista ready for raceday fightback in Catalunya
Jorge Lorenzo carried his good form from Mugello to Barcelona to take his first pole position since Valencia 2016 and his first for Ducati. The Italian factory’s joy was completed by Andrea Dovizioso, who will line up on the front row in third place behind Marc Márquez, who just 0.066 seconds behind his future team-mate.
Álvaro Bautista will start from just behind teammate Karel Abraham in 22nd after losing his final qualifying lap to a crash, and like Abraham he is now focused on making up positions after setting a decent pace in race trim.
22nd Álvaro Bautista 1:40.524:
“Today we tried to improve the feeling from yesterday. This morning we worked with used tyres and improve the lap time, thinking about race set-up. I was feeling quite confident but had a little crash and it upset my rhythm. In FP4 we tried a set-up that I didn’t like and we went back to the old one. In qualifying I had another crash and couldn’t put a good lap together. Starting from the back makes it more difficult but tomorrow will be a race of attrition. I think my pace is good so we will try to look after the tyres and hopefully make it to the end.”