Alvaro Bautista was a bit lucky this afternoon in Race 1 and managed to finish on the podium, as long as Alex Lowes and Leon Haslam’s crashes helped him to end in third after a race in which he stepped up lap after lap, being really fast during the final laps.

It was also first race for Bautista on wet conditions, with championship leader who had to learn a lot of new things: “It was my first time on wet with Superbike, I had a lot of things to learn. We stopped the race two times as well, so I had to keep the concentration high and do not lose the focus. Race was not easy as long as in some parts it was raining a lot and in others not, I had to understand every lap the condition of the circuit”.

In a first moment, Alvaro was more careful on not doing mistakes and then his feeling improved more and more: “I was careful on not doing mistake and on mistakes of the others when I started to fight. Lap after lap I found the limit and I was riding faster and faster, at the end I was enjoying the bike. In the practice you can go to the limit, but in the race you have to be more careful”.

https://www.motorlat.com/notas/wsbk/11658/riminiworldsbk-jonathan-rea-comes-back-to-victory-after-two-red-flags-due-to-rain

At the end, Loris Baz was catching up Ducati rider, but the Spaniard did not know that as long as he could not see: “I did not see Baz arriving, I could not see the board. I just saw Sykes in front of me and that was my reference, after a few laps I started to catch him and I did not see what happened behind me. After Leon’s crash, I just had Tom in front and I focused on my feeling”.

Alvaro is also feeling that Kawasaki did not make a good step up but that they are working a lot better than the start of the season: “At the begin of the season nobody expected my level, firstly they thought that Australia and Thailand were good tracks for us, but in Aragon the others woke up and started to build their work. You can see on the practice that they are doing different things from the beginning. I think Kawasaki is using their potential better, maybe in the past they did not need to use 100% of it”.

Championship leader expectation for tomorrow’s races is to fight with Jonathan, if it is gonna be dry: “We can fight for the victory, I feel comfortable, me and Jonathan have a similar race pace. I am not worried about the pace, only Jonathan has the rhythm, the other one just a good lap. If I will have a good start, it probably would be a fight between me and Jonathan. I do not know which tyre I will use, the new seems to have better performance in the initial laps but it drops a lot. We have to consider every aspects, we will decide before the race”