Round 12 #ARGWorldSbk
SUPERPOLE & RACE 2

A challenging penultimate Superbike World Championship round has concluded for Team HRC at the San Juan Villicum circuit in Argentina. Rider Alvaro Bautista rounded out the day’s two races with a tenth- and an eleventh- place finish.

The 10-lap Tissot Superpole race got underway at 12pm local time in sunny but rather windy conditions.
Alvaro made up one position through the opening lap to place fourteenth and was up into eleventh by lap four. Three seconds behind his teammate, the Spaniard did his best to close this gap but was not quite able to do so, considering the limited number of laps available to him. Bautista therefore crossed the line eleventh, immediately behind his team-mate.

Alvaro was back on track for the final race of the weekend at 3pm local time.
The HRC rider retained his starting position, fourteenth, through lap one, but then gradually started to make progress. By the mid-race point, Alvaro had caught his team-mate, find the eleventh place.
Holding these position for several laps, Bautista then passed Haslam in the final stages to cross the line tenth.

In the championship standings, Bautista positions tenth with 180 points.

The final Superbike World Championship round will be held at the new Mandalika circuit in Indonesia on 19-21 November.

Alvaro Bautista #19  

SPRC P11 –  RC2 P10

“Today we tried to improve our feeling with respect to yesterday because I’ve been struggling all weekend here to be honest. By making some adjustments to the electronics, we took a small step forward and my pace improved a little bit in the Superpole race as a result. Then in Race 2 we made another small step in terms of feeling, and I was able to maintain a more consistent pace, almost one second faster than I had been up until that point. Let’s say that we have progressed during the weekend but unfortunately not enough to run closer to the front. We’ve struggled at this track, yes, but I think that the work completed and the information gathered will be useful to the technicians in the future. I thank HRC as always because they continue to work really hard. Now we have time to rest up after so many weeks and races in a row. It’s almost a month until the last round in Indonesia, at a track that is new for everyone, so we will see; it’s always interesting to discover a new track”“.