Alvaro Bautista<\/a> said, speaking to WorldSBK.com ahead of the Aragon WorldSBK.<\/p>\n\u201cHe has to beat Toprak.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps last year, I took some points from Toprak, but in any case, he finished the races ahead of Nicolo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe needs to finish ahead of Toprak to reduce the gap.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s difficult because Toprak has a lot of motivation, really strong performance, and I think I\u2019ll think about myself and not help any other rider.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cI have a target, and I\u2019ll try to reach it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAlways very good to ride\u201d in Aragon<\/p>\n
With himself in mind, Bautista is optimistic ahead of the Aragon race, feeling that the MotorLand layout is one that suits both himself and the Ducati Panigale V4 R.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always very good to ride here,\u201d Bautista said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a track that I\u2019ve had good results at in the past, but every year and season is different. I think the layout fits my riding style very well, and plays to the strengths of the Ducati.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis season, we are not fighting for the position we wanted, but it\u2019s always nice to come here. I think we can be a bit more competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Bautista added that he is targeting third in the championship, but that he\u2019s worried about the trend of this year when he\u2019s been close to that third position.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur target right now is to finish in the top-three in the championship, and we\u2019re close,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time we\u2019re close to third in the championship, something happens, and I lose more points than I would gain!\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s Aragon Round was the last occasion on which Bautista was victorious in World Superbike, winning both the Superpole Race and Race 2 ahead of Toprak Razgatlioglu.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year was amazing from the Superpole Race onwards, which was a great battle with Nicolo [Bulega] and Toprak [Razgatlioglu],\u201d Bautista said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIn Race 2, we were really strong. We were really fast, lap by lap, we went faster and faster. It was one of my favourite races in my whole career.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Aragon WorldSBK marks the 10th stop on the 2025 calendar, and with only three rounds to go…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[8074,6910,64,63,806,805,803,804,6909,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-168688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-alvaro-bautista","9":"tag-aruba-it-racing-ducati","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-nicolo-bulega","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}