Alvaro Bautista is ready to put pen to paper, thus renewing his contract that will tie him to Ducati for the next seasons. Exactly three years ago at this time, in a hot August summer, the Spaniard decided to return to wear the Aruba colors, putting an end to all the difficulties experienced with Honda.
A choice that paid off for him and at the same time proved Ducati-Aruba right, so much so that they won two consecutive world titles together, beating the competition.
However, there is an interesting backstory regarding Alvaro Bautista’s return to Ducati after two years with Honda. To find out, however, we need to go back in time for a moment, more precisely to the Misano round of 2021, when Rinaldi defeated Redding by putting him in a corner.
On that occasion, the top management of the Borgo Panigale company and Stefano Cecconi realised that with Scott they would not be able to win the title, therefore it would be better to try again with the man who two years earlier had proved to be the best interpreter of the Panigale V4, namely Bautista.
In that summer of 2021, however, there was another rider called to renew his contract, namely Toprak Razgatlioglu with Yamaha. In the midst of negotiations with the House of the Three Tuning Forks, his skilled and astute manager Kenan Sofuoglu sounded out the Ducati track, sending an email to Borgo Panigale.
As soon as they learned of the situation and at the risk of losing their talent, Yamaha then counterattacked by relaunching the offer and convincing Toprak and Kenan to stay. A stay that would then last another two years, because in 2023 the Turk and his manager decided to end the experience in blue, embracing the BMW project.
The rest is modern day history that we all know well with Toprak and the M 1000 RR dominating the World Championship while Bautista and all the others were chasing.
