Alvaro Bautista, Ducati “not at our best” at Estoril World Superbike

The wet conditions of Friday morning had presented an opportunity for Bautista to try to confirm findings he made at Magny-Cours, where Satruday’s Superpole session and Race 1 were in full wet conditions.

“For sure, we were not in the best conditions today,” Bautista told WorldSBK.com.

“This morning was completely wet. We started by comparing two different setups, because in Magny-Cours I did the Superpole with a ‘wet’ setup and the feeling was not the best; then in the Race 1, we did a ‘flag-to-flag’ setup — meaning a ‘dry’ setup but with less preload on the suspension — and the feeling was much better.

“So, today, we had the chance to try this in the morning, and I compare and definitely I felt better on the dry setup with less preload.”

A major struggle for Bautista in 2024 has been qualifying, with his first front row of the year only coming last time out at Aragon.

With rain expected on Saturday morning, there is the possibility that Superpole will take place in the wet. Bautista said that, following his evaluation of the two setups on Friday morning in Estoril, he will take the dry setup with less preload if Superpole is wet.

“Every time that you qualify good, at least you have an easy life in the first few laps,” Bautista explained.

“I think if it’s wet conditions for Superpole, we’ll use the dry setup with less preload, because I felt better.

“But, even with that setup, we need to make some modifications. We have some ideas for wet conditions to improve the feeling and also the lap time.”

Friday afternoon was much drier than the morning, even if there were still damp patches around the track. Rain towards the end of FP2, though, left Bautista with unanswered questions at the end of day one in Portugal.

“In the afternoon, with not a completely dry track — because we had some wet patches — but almost dry, we start to work, we used the new [SCX] rear tyre,” he said.

“The feeling was not the best because I was suffering a lot exiting from the corner, in the drive area, because it seems like I don’t have good acceleration.

“I don’t have a good exit from the corner, so we try to make some modification, but at the end of the practice it started to rain, so we couldn’t try [the changes] and we cannot improve.”

Bautista is one of two riders — along with Nicolo Bulega — who can still mathematically stop Toprak Razgatlioglu from his second WorldSBK title.

After Bautista’s imperfect Friday, and Razgatlioglu’s time-topping performances in both wet and dry conditions, Bautista was unsure about his potential to fight against the championship leader this weekend.

“For sure, his [Toprak Razgatlioglu] level today has been really high in wet and dry conditions,” Bautista said.

“It’s true that, maybe, we are not at our best because we need to make some adjustments in the bike to feel better and to ride the bike as I want. It would be nice if we can battle against him, but let’s see the conditions.”