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One of the key talking points ahead of the 2022 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship campaign was Alvaro Bautista’s return to the Aruba.it Racing – Ducati team after two seasons spent with Team HRC. The return to Ducati has been good so far the Spanish rider as he sits on top of the Championship standings with six wins and 12 podiums from 12 races and his Crew Chief, Giulio Nava discussed, in part two of the interview, how Bautista compares to 2019 when he was a rookie and how two seasons at Honda are helping in 2022. You can read part one of the interview with Nava here.

Bautista arrived in WorldSBK in 2019 and initially took the Championship by storm as he won his first 11 races in the Championship and secured 15 consecutive podiums. After that incredible start, a series of crashes meant his Championship challenge unravelled with Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) going on to take his fifth crown in 2019. After his debut campaign with Ducati, Bautista moved to Honda for 2020 and 2021 where he managed three podiums before a return to Ducati in 2022.

Discussing the difference between 2019 Bautista and 2022 Bautista, Nava said: “The first thing you can notice is that he seems to have the situation more under control. In my opinion, I’m sure he’s fast, the problem is you need to provide him with the right tools to be fast. This means he needs to have the right bike for the first lap and for the last lap. t’s not just the chassis side, it’s the chassis, it’s the bike setup, it’s how you manage the tyre, and also himself. Alvaro came here from MotoGP™ and started to win races. We did not know the bike deeply because it was a brand-new bike. Alvaro didn’t know the Championship deeply, he didn’t know the tyres, so I think, now, with three years, one in Ducati and two with the previous manufacturer, there’s more experience. In all situations, he knows how to manage them better. This is the biggest difference.”

Managing the race sometimes means knowing when to settle for the position the rider is currently in rather than pushing on to gain a place and points in the Championship, to score consistent points. Bautista is, this season, one of two riders to have scored points in every race and the only rider to have scored a podium place in every race. The results of the season means the Spanish rider is 36 points clear of Rea at the top of the standings and 79 clear of reigning Champion Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pata Yamaha with Brixx WorldSBK).

Going deeper into Bautista’s ability to settle for a position rather than push on, Nava added: “If you look at Misano, he was first and he was fast at the end. If you are fast at the end of the race, it means you can be fast at the beginning of the race. If you can set a 34.1s on Lap 18, you can set a 34.1s on Lap 5, Lap 7, and this, for me, was something that Alvaro was doing in 2019. He was just riding the bike on the performance he is capable of. It’s not just Alvaro. It’s Alvaro, the bike, the tyres, the track. If you have 10 degrees more on the track than the day before, the track will get more slippery, the tyre will act in a different way, many different factors you have to keep in mind. Now, he’s more aware of what can happen, so he manages everything. Before, because he didn’t have enough knowledge let’s say, he set a lap time that for him was easy, so he did it without taking enough consideration to the other factors, the track, the tyre. I think it’s normal. It’s a matter of knowledge. I think Alvaro has everything under control more. He knows exactly when and how he can pass the limit, when it’s okay or when it’s not the time and settles for second or keeping some margin in corners.”

Nava, Bautista’s long-time crew chief, moved to Team HRC with Bautista for his two seasons with the Japanese manufacturer as they looked for glory with Honda. Three podiums was the result of their two seasons together before a return to Ducati for 2022, but Nava acknowledges the two seasons with Honda have played a part in Bautista’s 2022 title charge due to his extra experience and knowing when to settle rather than push.

Nava said: “The Honda bike was another challenge. Again, it was a new machine. It was a brand-new machine for Honda and a brand-new machine for Alvaro, because he had never raced an inline-four. It was quite a challenge. On that bike, it was further to the top and the bike can only provide until a certain level to be closer to the top, and at the same time he needed to train himself to stay on the limit every time. Now with Ducati, he can find the limit and he can go 3%, 45, 5% from the limit. When he wants or needs it, he has that 5% to play with. At Honda, if it was 20 laps, it was like 20 qualifying laps if he wanted to try and stay with the top five. That’s why it was easy to make a mistake or crash or whatever. Now if you have a rider who, for two years, trained himself to stay that focused for a long time, that has to pay attention to all the small details because the bike needs to be 100% to try and hope to stay in the top five. At the same moment, you take this rider with all this knowledge, and you put him on a winning machine or a more developed machine, automatically it’s better.”

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