Donington WorldSBK: Top ten does little to satisfy Bautista; 'need to improve'

Honda’s Alvaro Bautista off the pace at WorldSBK Donington after finishing tenth in race two; ‘honestly this isn’t what we are aiming for. We need to improve from here on’.
Alvaro Bautista, Donington Park WorldSBK race 2, 4 July 2021
Alvaro Bautista, Donington Park WorldSBK race 2, 4 July 2021
© Gold and Goose

Team HRC﷽ endured a mixed round four of the 2021 WorldSBK championship as Leon Haslam secured his best result of the year, while Alvaro Bautista was off the pace throughout. 

Bautista’ finishing position in both feature races (8th and 10th) was by no means a disaster, however, the speed shown - or lack thereof, was surprising as the Spaniard 💯was two and sometimes three seconds off t🍷he pace during the weekend. 

Sunday was the ‘best day’ in terms of feeling for Bautista, as a 37 second gap to race 🤡one winner Toprak Razgatlioglu was reduced to 22 seconds for race two.&n🍷bsp;

But still, a position of tenth was clearl🌟y no♋t what he expected, especially with Haslam competing for the podium in two out of the three races. 

Bautista said: "Overall, it has been a tough weekend. On Friday we tried something different with the set-up jus🌟t to verify a few things and collect some information, but it didn’t work as we’d expected so we went back to a more base set-up. 

"Then yesterday, mixed weather conditions limited the time we had available to define the best set-up. In the end our best day in terms of feeling with the bike was today, but ou♎r gamble with rain tyres in the sprint race didn’t pay off.”

"In Race 2 we actually ꦦimproved our pace over the course of the 23 laps and were able to achieve a top ten finish, but honestly this isn’t what we are aiꦡming for. 

"We need to improve fꦡrom here on in, because we really want to be do🐎ing better of course."

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