Second chance for Bautista to secure Ducati home win

Alvaro Bautista will attempt to come good on his dreams of securing a home win for his Aruba.it Ducati World Superbike team at Misano after missing out at Imola.

Though Bautista has enjoyed an immensely successful season on the Ducati Panigale V4 R, winning a massive 13 races in 16 starts, two of those ‘failures’ to top the podium came when WorldSBK competed in the team’s ‘backyard’ at Imola last month.

Nevertheless, Bautista – fresh from two wins on his own home soil of Jerez – is more confident of Italian turf success for Ducati at a Misano circuit he knows intimately from his time competing in MotoGP.

“It was a pity about my crash at Jerez, but as I said at the time, that’s racing, so there’s no point in dwelling on it too much! Now we look forward to the next race in Misano, where we did some tests a few weeks ago. Although the conditions weren’t great, we managed to get some references for this weekend.

“I’m looking forward to trying to keep the same feeling with the Panigale V4 R and continue the good work we’ve done so far. Misano is a second home race for the Aruba team and Ducati, and we will for sure have a lot of fans to support us.”

Bautista - who heads into the Misano WorldSBK weekend with a 41-point lead over Jonathan Rea - has enjoyed notable success at Misano in the past, winning there in 250GP and claiming his maiden MotoGP podium with a third place in 2012.