2023-10-09 17:16:49
Álvaro Bautista has grown tired of the constant criticism that his Panigale V4 R receives for being the most competitive motorcycle in the entire paddock. In the last Portimao event, the strategy that the #1 number followed in the two races on Sunday allowed Bautista to overtake Toprak Razgatlioglu just 200 meters from the finish line, two overtakes in which Álvaro took oil out of the engine of his Ducati and also the prodigious traction that the Panigale V4 R offers its riders, much superior to what Toprak Razgatlioglu can have with his Yamaha.
The Turk was forced to punish his tires more than ever in order to keep Bautista at bay on Sunday, and that ended up taking its toll on the last lap of the Superpole Race and Race 2, running out of traction behind to, at least, make life difficult for the Spaniard on the Portimao straight.
The Yamaha rider’s anger as soon as he crossed the finish line – he even broke the dome with a punch – was more than evident, and this was noted by Toprak himself after the race. The Turk assured that his motorcycle “it looked like a supersport” accelerating in front of Bautista’s Ducati, and made it clear that, for his part, It would have been impossible to offer a better ride on the Yamaha R1, revealing the superiority of the Italian superbike.
Since last year, criticism from Álvaro Bautista’s rivals has always focused on his motorcycle; We have rarely heard Toprak or Jonathan Rea demand faster motorcycles and competitive to their own factories and follow the example of Ducati, that is, to really focus on superbikes and develop a production motorcycle capable of standing up to a model as well polished as the Panigale V4 R, a machine that in turn takes advantage of solutions of the Desmosedici MotoGP, such as its four-cylinder V engine.
Álvaro himself wanted to vindicate in Portugal the efforts that his factory has made to put on the track a motorcycle that is so fast and at the same time effective, capable of acclimatizing to any track as the Talavera native has been demonstrating for the last two years. “Ducati has invested a lot of money in development and improvements, but then you wonder “Why does the regulation harm some motorcycles so that the worst motorcycles are closer?”, valued number #1 in statements collected by Speedweek.com.
For Baptist “It is not fair to punish a manufacturer that has invested a lot”a criticism that is directed at the reduction in revolutions that the Panigale’s engine has been suffering since the start of the 2023 campaign. For the Spaniard, the way forward is to exploit the super concessions which have been launched this year and which allow manufacturers such as Honda to resort to chassis designs that are not derived from the motorcycle used in their production CBR 1000 RR-R.
“Honda, among other things, has been allowed to use a different chassis to improve,” the current WorldSBK champion now remembers. “Ducati is using a stock bike, just with 1,000 revolutions less. The Honda is now more or less a prototype because you can’t buy the bike like that. In the end, it is better to allow one manufacturer to reach a higher level than to demote another to a lower level. Is more fair”.
And he also gives his opinion on the situation of the machine that dominated the championship between 2015 and 2020, the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10 RR, a bike that has clearly fallen behind in terms of performance compared to the Ducati and even the Yamaha R1, especially in this second half of the season with a totally unknown Jonathan Rea.
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Bautista believes that “The base of the Kawasaki is probably from 2014, and you can’t fight a current model with a bike like that. Many things have changed since then. The tires are no longer the same, the electronics and brakes have become more powerful. When you release a new motorcycle, the manufacturer has to make changes in this regard. “What they need is a completely new motorcycle,” appreciates Álvaro Bautista who is on the verge of sealing his second consecutive superbike world title in Jerez.
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