Hot conditions and a tight Navarra track make it hard for Bautista and Haslam in race 1

“I’m obviously not happy with how today went. I didn’t make the best start because I got stuck in traffic through the first corners and lost some positions. But I soon found my rhythm and started to fight with other riders and overtake them. Then I crashed. I had already saved a crash several times earlier in that same lap, before ultimately losing the front through turn 12, but I wasn’t doing anything different. And nothing strange came up when we looked at the data so maybe it was just a case of the track conditions, which were slippery in the heat. Some other riders crashed at that point of the race too, so perhaps it was related to the track conditions. A pity in any case because I could have finished at least eighth, which is not our target of course, but it would have been something after a hard-fought race. Anyway, tomorrow we have another chance, and we’ll try to do well in the sprint race in order to gain a better starting position for race 2, and then we will see if we can improve our feeling and results.”

“Honestly so far this has been one of our toughest weekends, but we knew this circuit would be a difficult one for us. I made a good start today anyway, after what was a very bad qualifying, and I was in a battle with Alvaro and Gerloff and some other Yamahas which honestly, I did not expect. In the end, we struggled a lot though, especially with the front closing, so I really had to work to manage the bike over 23 laps. But as I said, we were not so far from some of the other guys, which I did not expect at this circuit.”