Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) had a mixed Sunday at the Australian Round but was able to end it on a high as the first weekend of the 2025 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship concluded. Forced to start on the fourth row of the grid after a dramatic Tissot Superpole Race, the #19 battled his way through to claim second place, directly behind his teammate, in a strong start to the year for the 2022 and 2023 Champion at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.

Bautista appears to have made gains in the Tissot Superpole session compared to 2024, when it was often holding him back despite his strong race pace. As he had to fight through the grid in both Race 1 and the Tissot Superpole Race, it was often the final outing of the weekend where Bautista was at his best. In Australia, he took fourth on the grid for the first two races of the weekend and converted that into P3 in Race 1.

In the Superpole Race, Bautista again started from fourth and looked to make early gains, but he ran wide at Turn 4 – along with Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) – and dropped him towards the back of the pack. Looking to fight his way through the field and try to get an all-important top-nine finish, the #19 then crashed with a lowside on the exit of Siberia, a left-hand corner. Again, he re-joined the race, but any hopes of a top-nine finish were now non-existent.

With Bautista outside of the top nine in the Superpole Race, he started Race 2 from 11^th with Razgatlioglu alongside him in tenth with their grid slots based on the Superpole results from Saturday. He was ninth at the end of the first lap before moving into the top six by Lap 4. After the pit stop cycle had concluded on Lap 11, Bautista found himself in fourth place but soon got ahead of Scott Redding (MGM BONOVO Racing) and Andrea Iannone (Team Pata GoEleven) to finish in second place, just 2.6 seconds down on teammate Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati).

Reflecting on his Superpole Race drama and Race 2 comeback, the Spaniard said: “It was a really fun race for me! Starting from the back, I had to overtake a lot of riders, so I enjoyed the race a lot. It was a pity because in the morning in Warm Up, we tried some different settings, and I didn’t have good confidence. For the Superpole Race, we went back. I made a mistake at Turn 4 because the wind was pushing a lot and behind other riders, with the slipstream, I couldn’t stop the bike. I saw Toprak had the same problem. I crashed on the exit of Turn 6. I don’t know why. I lost the rear. In any case, it made me start from the back in Race 2.

“At the least, I enjoyed it. I don’t think, if I started at the front, I could be with Nicolo but it’s true I was catching him in the second half of the race. I did the fastest lap of the race. I had the pace to fight for victory. I don’t know if I could fight with him starting from the front or not, but the fact is that we were quite competitive. I’m especially happy because the feeling with the bike is getting better; I have more confidence and I can push the bike to the limit more.”

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