Alvaro Bautista reveals 2024 WorldSBK highlight: “I said ‘Sh*t, I’m doing so well!”

Alvaro Bautista’s 2024 WorldSBK season was generally one of disappointment, but the Spaniard still had his highlights last year.

Bautista would ultimately relinquish the WorldSBK crown to Toprak Razgatlioglu at the end of 2024, but the Ducati rider had his high points along the way, most notably a double-win in Aragon.

For Bautista, it was the second of those two wins, coming in Race 2, that was the most noteworthy, as he bested Razgatlioglu in a lap time duel that lasted almost the whole race, and saw the Bautista himself go faster than his time from Superpole that put him third on the grid.

“In Race 2, the pace we did in the race was amazing,” Bautista said, speaking to WorldSBK.com.

“For me, it’s been one of the best races in all of my career.

“The feeling I had in Race 2 was amazing, I never had that feeling.

“I saw the lap time, fast lap, I saw the gap to Toprak, plus zero; next lap even faster, plus zero; next lap even faster, plus zero.

“When I saw on the penultimate lap my best lap [time], even faster than in Superpole, I said ‘Sh*t, I’m doing so well!’”

The Race 2 win was Bautista’s second of the day, after winning the Superpole Race in a bar-to-bar battle with Toprak Razgatlioglu and Nicolo Bulega.

“It was a long time without winning,” Bautista reflected. “It was very important to get the victory on Sunday.”

He added: “It’s always very special to come back to winning ways; especially when you win a race like [...] the Superpole Race [at Aragon], fighting with the two fastest guys of the category.

“We were battling against Nicolo [Bulega] and Toprak [Razgatlioglu], and in that moment I knew that I could not make a mistake and make something bad to my teammate [Bulega].

“I tried to pass Nicolo with two laps to go, and then I saw the chance to be very close to Toprak.

“In the past, maybe it was easy to pass on the straight, but this year [2024] the BMW was quite fast, so I just tried to make the move entering the long straight and try to close the last corner.”