Bautista back in the top 10 as top independent Ducati

2018-09-09 18:27
Ángel Nieto Team takes seventh straight top ten in ninth



Just a couple of months after a famous home win for Ducati with Jorge Lorenzo at Mugello, the Italian factory did it again today with Andrea Dovizioso taking the honours at Misano. Dovizioso escaped from Lorenzo and Marc Márquez to take a convincing win, his third of the season after Qatar and Brno. Lorenzo was unable to join his teammate on the podium today after crashing with two laps to go when fighting with Márquez for second position. In the end it went to Márquez with Cal Crutchlow in third.

Álvaro Bautista finished with another top ten and the honour of being the top independent Ducati rider at Misano. The Spaniard has been in the top ten for the last seven races now and this result moves him up to twelfth in the championship. Bautista quickly made up a position from the start and continued to make progress through the field to take ninth. Karel Abraham made up four positions in the San Marino GP, after starting from 24th. The Czech rider had problems with the front end in the first third of the race and lost ground to his rivals that made it difficult to recover more positions in the later stages.



9th Álvaro Bautista: “A top ten finish nowadays in MotoGP is not easy because the level is so high, so another one here is very positive because for some reason I found myself a little off the pace of the guys at the front today. Today we managed to improved the feeling with the bike and went for the soft front and rear options, which I think was the right choice. I am happy because we were close to the factory bikes and given that Cal Crutchlow is on factory material I am the first independent rider today. In any case our goal is to continue improving in the next race.”

20th Karel Abraham: “The only thing I think we could have done better is being in front of Syahrin. He was seven seconds of us and I think this was reachable but unfortunately from the beginning of the race I had problems with the front, I was losing it a lot but after seven or eight laps it got much better. In the middle of the race I had the best feeling I have had all weekend with the bike, it was really good, but then of course it dropped again. With seven laps to go Jack Miller overtook me but I couldn’t follow his pace and it would have been risky to try. It was a big gap in front of me and a big gap behind to I just managed the front and rear tyres to the end of the race. It was a shame the first seven or eight laps weren’t what we needed but overall the race was not that bad. We have to go to Aragon with our chins up, ready to fight again.”

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