Alvaro Bautista 11th to 3rd: “I did a gamble, I’m happy”

A tyre gamble paved the way for a strong fightback by Alvaro Bautista during Saturday's opening WorldSBK race at Donington Park.

The reigning double world champion was left 11th on the grid after losing his best qualifying lap - good enough for a place on the second row - due to track limits.

But despite not doing more than ten laps on the soft rear tyre, Bautista and Ducati decided to roll the dice in the hottest temperatures of the weekend so far.

It paid off and the Spanish star carved through to third place, behind BMW's Toprak Razgatlioglu and Kawasaki's Alex Lowes.

"It was not easy," said Bautista. "Starting from the back is always difficult, especially at this track where there are not many places to overtake.

"I did a gamble and used the soft tyre on the rear because the track temperature was higher than all the weekend, so I just tried. 

"During the practice, I did only 10 laps [on it] so I didn't know what would happen after that. But yeah, I take it and I'm happy because it was the maximum we can do for sure."

But Bautista emphasised that he is still far from comfortable.

"For sure, the feeling with the bike is not the best right now and we need to improve because I cannot ride as I want," he said. "I cannot push 100%. But in any case, today was the maximum we could achieve and I'm really happy

"Congrats to to my team because we did a really good choice for the tyres and it helped me to be more consistent. We will try to make it a bit better tomorrow."

Bautista is now tied with rookie team-mate Nicolo Bulega, whom he overtook for third place late in the race, for second in the world championship, 33 points behind man-of-the-moment Razgatlioglu.