Alvaro Bautista “happy with the feeling” despite French WorldSBK FP2 crash

Alvaro Bautista’s French Friday at WorldSBK’s Magny-Cours round was far from straightforward, with red flags and crashes complicating matters, but his conclusion at the end of the day was positive overall.

A new selection of Pirelli development tyres — including a new SCX rear tyre and a new SC1 front tyre — meant that Bautista spent the first session evaluating the new options.

“This morning, we started with the new Pirelli tyres, front and rear, just to get a first impression,” he said. “It was not too bad, but on the front I miss some feeling. Maybe the target of Pirelli is for hotter temperatures, and in the morning it was cold, so I didn’t feel a big advantage comparing the [standard] SC1 front. Also, the rear, I felt a lot of movement from the new tyre.”

In the afternoon, Bautista reverted to standard tyres and recovered his feeling.

“In the afternoon, when the temperature was a bit higher, but not too much, we [used] the SC1 on the front and the SCX on the rear, and the feeling was a bit better,” he said. “I was able to make a good first stint before the red flag (for Toprak Razgatlioglu’s crash) that I was feeling really good — good pace, and good feeling on the bike.”

Some changes made to Bautista’s setup didn’t result in improvements, though, and instead Bautista crashed at low speed in the middle of turn eight..

“Then, when practice was stopped, we made some adjustment in the rear of the bike,” Bautista said, “but it didn’t like me, in fact I crash in turn eight — it was an easy crash, no problems for me.

“Also, in the last exit, we try another configuration in the gearing of the bike, but, again, I didn’t feel so comfortable.

“So, at the end, we make two different tests during the FP2, it didn’t like me a lot, so tomorrow we come back for our standard setup that I started with in FP2, that I like it a lot. From there, we try to make some small adjustments, not big changes like we did [today].”

The encouraging thing for Bautista is that the feeling he had in Most and Portimao, that he had described positively, had remained, in general, at Magny-Cours.

“This morning, straight away I feel the same feeling as Portimao and Most,” Bautista said. “Only the tyres were different. But, in FP2, I started and I felt suddenly very good on the bike, so I’m happy for that.

“It’s a bit of a pity because we didn’t find some improvement with the changes we tried, but it’s normal: you make some tests, but not always you find what you expect.

“This time, we didn’t find it, but I’m happy with the feeling I had with the bike.”