Alvaro Bautista’s run of DNF results finally came to an end at the Gran Premio bwin de España after three retirements in as many races.
The Team GO&FUN Honda Gresini rider finished the fourth race of the season in sixth place, in front of a huge crowd of 115,000 fans in Jerez.
Starting from tenth place after two complicated days of practice, the Spaniard was able to recover several positions in the second half of the race, culminating in a last lap battle with Andrea Dovizioso for fifth.
Having crossed the line just over 0.1s behind Dovizioso, Bautista stated, "Today’s race was not bad, despite a difficult weekend. The team worked in a fantastic way, but we couldn’t find a good setting for the race, so I knew it would be tough. At the start I immediately struggled with front grip, losing the front end in several parts of the track. In any case, I tried to keep my pace and when I saw that the riders in front of me were opening a gap, I kept calm. Later I started to recover and I was also able to overtake them."
"The last lap battle with Dovizioso was exciting, congratulations to him, he defended fifth position very well. It must be said that given our situation I preferred not to take too many risks and our main goal was to finish the race. I'm glad I finished my first Grand Prix of the season and I hope that from now on we can be competitive as we were in winter testing and in the first race."
source : motogp.com
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