Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) battled his way to a Race 2 rostrum at Donington Park in the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship after finishing in third place – despite putting teammate Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) under intense pressure on the final lap for P2. The #19 had struggled on Friday to find the pace but found gains every day which culminated in a rostrum finish at the Prosecco DOC UK Round.

Bautista was only 11^th on the combined times in Friday’s and that pace was reflected in Saturday’s Tissot Superpole session, when he could only manage P10 with a 1’25.588s. That put him mid-pace for the race start and he was caught up in the Turn 1 crash along with Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team) and Yari Montella (Barni Spark Racing Team), and not only did it ruin his Race 1, it cost him the chance of accumulating data for Sunday’s Race 2.

In Sunday morning’s Tissot Superpole Race, the two-time Champion had battle his way up to fourth. That gave him a second row starting position for Race 2 and the #19 took full advantage of that, launching well when lights went out to move into P3 and ahead of teammate Bulega. On Lap 3, the two teammates battled for the first time, with Bulega divebombing Bautista at Turn 11 before running wide, with the #19 keeping P3 – for another corner. At Turn 12, Bulega caught everyone by surprise by passing his experience teammate with Bautista settling for P3.

On his podium, Bautista said: “I’m really happy, especially because I missed the race on Saturday. At the start of Race 2, I didn’t have any information for the long distance. The only information I had was from FP2 on Friday, but it’s not the same as the race. I had everything to discover. I just tried to understand the track conditions. Watching the times on Saturday, I saw they struggled a lot. I was a bit careful because maybe the track wasn’t like I expected. I kept calm at the beginning. This kind of track, I struggle a lot with the bike because there’s a lot of fast and flowing corners. When the bike is high with fuel, I struggle more. When the bike becomes a bit lighter, for me it’s easier. After mid-race, I saw the gap to Nicolo and Toprak was too big. I started to feel better and better, and I could throw the bike how I like it. I caught them a lot.

While Bulega looked like he had pulled a gap over his teammate, in the final laps of the 23-lap race Bautista was quicker and closed down a gap of around a second over the final two laps to finish only two tenths behind his teammate. Bautista gained massively through the Foggy Esses, Melbourne Loop and Goddards on the final lap, but was unable to make a move on his teammate with Bulega able to hold on to second.

Discussing the fight with his teammate, Bautista said: “I made a small mistake with two laps to go at the Foggy Esses because I tried to brake really hard to catch Nicolo and arrive on the last lap close to him. I lost a couple of tenths and that’s what I missed on the last lap. In any case, I tried until the end. The last corner was difficult because that corner is pretty tricky and it’s not easy to make an overtake without risk, especially because Nicolo closed the door. Third place isn’t too bad. I’m happy with my performance because we were really close to them.”

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