Alvaro Bautista leads Stefan Bradl and Valentino Rossi (no.19) - Photo Credit: MotoGP.com
Alvaro Bautista accepted he'd left himself far too much work to do after coming from tenth on the grid to finish sixth at Catalunya. The Spaniard finished less than five seconds away from the podium positions but and blamed his poor performance on Saturday for the distance between himself and the frontrunners.
“It is a shame that I didn’t get a perfect start. It’s bad enough being on the third row but I managed to lose positions from there and had a tough battle to recover, especially with Valentino. The most pleasing thing about the fight with Rossi was that I passed him in the same place he passed Lorenzo for the win in 2009. Unfortunately the guys at the front had got too far ahead and by the time I was lapping at the same pace as them the tyres were dropping off and I couldn’t catch them. Next time we have to try hard to get a better position on the grid and make a better start but for now I am satisfied. It’s the same result as Jerez and Estoril but with a much smaller gap to the podium and now we have the opportunity to build on it in the test tomorrow.”
San Carlo Honda Gresini teammate Michele Pirro was just 0.721s away from finishing as the top CRT rider, coming home in fourteenth place, and was happy with the pace of his FTR-Honda despite a slow start.
“We always get a good start but unlike the others I don’t seem to be able to push hard on fresh tyres. Over the rest of the race my pace is consistent so we need to work on not losing so much ground at the start of the race. I am sure we could have finished as the top CRT here today but anyway this is still a good result and I had a lot of fun overtaking. I have to say a special thanks to the team, who are working round the clock to give me the means to do well. I do what I can and I am sure that if we continue to believe we will get our rewards.”
