VOL. 56 ISSUE 8 FEBRUARY 26, 2019 P65
sues, like last year. Other riders
also said that they had another
second of pace in them, if only
they thought their tires would go
the distance.
Rea was still pleased with
his bike, clearly, when he was
asked what could be changed
now to take on the red bike.
"What can we change?" he
said. "Our chassis is incredible,
electronics are working great.
Our bike is an 18,000-euro bike
from a shop. It is very easy to
see from TV the advantage they
have. In the past years when I
have been in dominating form I
have never had the fastest bike
out there."
Bautista's winning pace was
untouchable this weekend
(although not much faster than
last year's opening race), but
he eased up over the line in
each race to win the full pointers
BY GORDON RITCHIE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
T
o describe the domina-
tion of the first WorldSBK
round of the 2019 sea-
son by Alvaro Bautista and the
Aruba.it Ducati factory Panigale
V4 R as merely total would win
an award for restraint.
Bautista scored all three
WorldSBK race wins available.
By miles, for the most part.
In the first and last races, of
22 laps each, he just motored
away from even four-time cham-
pion Jonathan Rea like his KRT
four-cylinder was standing still.
That's what having 1400 rpm
more than even your best rivals'
machines can pump out does
for you, exiting onto the straights
and out the corners at least.
But the fact is that the Ducati
looked to be working well ev-
erywhere, with no evident weak
spots, and a happy knack of not
using up its tires.
Make no bones about it; Mo-
toGP tech has come to WorldS-
BK, finally.
As Bautista said himself, when
asked to describe his new win-
ning bike in one word, "I cannot
choose one word to describe
the Panigale, but I would say it
is—MotoGP for the street. I think
the bike's potential is quite high,
but for sure it is not 100 percent.
"Here I have a good refer-
ence in this track, and this layout
adapts really well to our bike,"
he continued. "We will see in the
next races but I think we will be
more competitive than these two
races that we saw this week-
end."
Rea, knowing he could go
much faster, was too uptight
about possibly having tire is-
Alvaro Bautista had never raced in WorldSBK
before Phillip Island. By the time he left Australia,
he'd never lost a WorldSBK race. His domination
on his debut was absolute
RED MOON
RISING
