Bautista facing up to challenging season

While Aprilia have struggled in winter testing Alvaro Bautista is relatively pleased with the bike saying that there are no specific areas that the bike is performing poorly. Rather the Spaniard thinks that the bike must improve in every area from where it is at the moment. Bautista, who won the 125cc championship riding for Aprilia and was a 250cc title contender with the manufacturer, acknowledges this season will be a huge challenge however he is upbeat about the task ahead.

“For sure I’m excited to start this season, it’s always exciting to start the season,” said Bautista. “This season will be a really hard challenge for me because we have a lot of work to do this year. For sure it’ll be different compared to other seasons when I could focus more on getting good results but this race and this season it will be more important to have a good performance from the bike and to develop the bike. It will be a different way to see the races.

“The bike does not have a big problem, it’s general areas that we have to improve on with the spec of the bike. We need to improve the engine to have more power. We need to improve the electronics because the base we have for electronics is from the World Superbike and it is a different bike with different tyres so we need to develop that. On the frame we need to improve for the entry and exit of the corner to give more rear grip. So we need to improve all the areas of the bike but there isn’t a single big problem but we need to improve many areas.”

While Aprilia developed a 2015 bike that was tested at Sepang 1 Bautista admitted to MCN that he’ll continue to use the hybrid bike that was used at the post Valencia test while the team’s test riders will spend time testing the 2015 bike.

“We will get some data for the new bike but Aprilia tried to make a MotoGP bike for 2015 for Sepang 1 but it didn’t work so we decided to improve the 2014 hybrid bike with some modifications such as a bigger fuel tank and a different seat. They got some data to try and make a new bike for next year but nothing has been decided. For us the testing programme will be at the races but with Biaggi they will test outside the races. For us the important thing is to work at the races.”