Alvaro Bautista (Pull&Bear Aspar Team) had an impressive Italian GP, coming home in P5 after a solid top ten qualifying on Saturday to take his second top five finish of the season so far. After crashing out of the two previous races, the former 125 World Champion said it was an important race to finish - and finish well.
Alvaro Bautista, P5: "It was very important for us to finish the race after the last two races, with two crashes it was important to finish. On the first lap I was very careful, maybe too much to not take a lot of risks. I just tried to stay with the group, but some riders passed me, especially Zarco who was very aggressive and a few laps later I saw that he did the same with Pedrosa, it was very, very aggressive. But I calmed down, I found my pace and at the end I found the other riders, I caught them, and my rhythm was stronger.
"When I caught Marquez I thought that maybe I could go faster than him and catch the front group, but he stayed behind me and I couldn’t pull away. I was catching the front riders but the difference in lap times was too small, but I used that to be focused, as a reference to try to push to the maximum and pull away from Marquez. At the end I saw that it was impossible and that Marquez tried to stay behind, and on the last lap I tried to close many points that I knew he would try to pass me, but I was able to keep fifth place. I’m happy, because first of all we finished the race and second we took fifth place, and this is a real fifth place; it’s not like Argentina with Marc and Dani crashing in front of me. Here, nobody had a problem in front of me, so we could finish. Thanks to my team, thanks to Ducati, because at the end we can finish the race and show a little bit of our potential."