Starting next year, World Superbike Championship bikes will have to carry ballast to meet the minimum bike + rider weight, which will be 80kg. Álvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Ducati) is one of the lightest riders on the grid and disagrees with these rules – not for competitiveness reasons, but for the safety of the bike and the ability to gain weight naturally without severely affecting his performance.
In statements to GPOne.com, the Spanish rider emphasized that he disagrees with this measure for safety reasons and even hinted at retirement: ‘I don’t think adding more weight to the bike is correct or safe. I wouldn’t be able to gain a lot of weight myself. I will try it with more weight on the bike, but honestly, I’m here competing because I enjoy it, and I feel safe on the bike. But if I try these rules and feel that the bike becomes more dangerous than necessary, for me, it’s clear, I’ll stay at home. I don’t want to risk my life more than necessary. I will try, but it will become dangerous for me’.
Bautista also argued that the calculation formula for the average weight of riders should be different: ‘It’s obvious that the average weight is high if you have four riders above 90kg, but 80kg is too much. I think the average weight should be calculated by excluding the three lightest and the three heaviest riders, and then taking the average of the others. The heaviest rider in MotoGP will have around 80kg because you need to be athletic. Some say it’s a matter of height, but Aleix [Espargaró], for example, is very tall but light because he lives the life of a rider and trains like a rider’.
In his case, the two-time world champion explained that despite being light, he is limited in weight gains due to his performance: ‘Our goal is to try to add about 6kg because we can’t put much more weight on the bike now. Of course, I will try to add some muscle mass, but I can’t gain too much weight, otherwise I would lose performance in terms of movement, agility, and speed. Everyone says it would be easy for me to gain weight, but I would lose performance, so I think I can gain a maximum of 2kg or 3kg of muscle, no more. Otherwise, I would be «bulky», slow, and get tired more’.
On the other hand, Bautista stressed that riders must have certain physical characteristics: ‘If you put your belly up, it would be better to stay on the sofa at home instead of being a rider. A rider has to be lean, athletic, and physically well-prepared, not a bodybuilder’.