Injury led Alvaro Bautista to consider WorldSBK retirement before renewing with Ducati

Alvaro Bautista comes into this weekend’s WorldSBK French Round with a fresh factory Ducati contract under his belt for the 2025 season, but it wasn’t always a certainty.

Bautista’s previous two seasons in WorldSBK saw him take dominant championship victories in both 2022 and 2023, but this season has been more difficult.

The Spaniard has only won two races so far in 2024, and currently lies third in the championship, 142 points behind the leader, Toprak Razgatlioglu, and 50 points behind his rookie teammate Nicolo Bulega.

Nonetheless, Bautista described it as “a pleasure” to re-sign with Ducati for 2025.

“It has been a pleasure to keep racing next year in World Superbike with Aruba.it Racing Ducati,” Bautista said. “It was my wish, especially after the Most round where I started to feel good on the bike again, very similar to last year when we found something that helps us to be competitive again.

“Also, in Portimao, the feeling was really good. So, I’m really happy to keep racing because I feel quite strong physically but also mentally.

“I feel that I can be competitive, so that’s important. I’m not here to just fill a place in the grid, I’m here to be competitive and the day I don’t feel this feeling I will retire.”

Although Bautista has re-signed with Ducati, retirement, he says, was a legitimate option in his mind following injury problems in preseason which stemmed from a testing crash he had last November.

“I thought [about retiring],” he said, “because especially with my injury, and the feeling I had in the first few tests that I did with the bike— I cannot ride the bike without pain.

“In fact, I [only] started to sleep well practically from June or July, so it was really hard to recover from the injury and for sure the retirement was there. Then I start to recover, I start to feel better, and also the problem with the bike that I didn’t feel that feeling with the bike that I had last year.

“So, many combinations that push me to think about the retirement. But we fought [against] the adversities, and I feel like I improved, I’m a better rider, a more complete rider, so I feel that I can show more than I did until now.

“So, it was there, the retirement, but fortunately for next year it’s not an option anymore.”