Alvaro Bautista and his dismal season with Barni: “All the Ducati riders were fast, except me.”

One podium all season, in the second race of the year, followed by a long chase that never reached its target. Alvaro Bautista looks back on the 2026 World Superbike Championship as the toughest season of his career in production-based racing and, with the championship over, explains what happened in the Barni team garage.

A new bike built for bigger riders, no baseline to work from, and a search for a magic fix that only made things worse.

The context makes the collapse all the more striking. After arriving in Superbike in 2019, the Spaniard immediately became world runner-up with Ducati, before two lacklustre seasons with the Honda factory team, where he managed three third-place finishes. In 2022, he returned to Ducati, winning two world titles and finishing third overall in both 2024 and 2025. Then came his split from the Aruba team and, at 41, a move to Marco Bernabò’s independent squad.

The picture was further complicated by the 5–6 kg of ballast, which varies from round to round according to the minimum combined weight for rider and race gear. This is the measure Superbike introduced in 2024 to stop Bautista from dominating the series as he had for two consecutive seasons. Even on the factory Panigale, the personal handicap had already taken its toll, ruling Bautista out of the fight for wins and leaving him at a clear disadvantage compared with his teammates. With Barni, a satellite team that naturally has fewer options for working around technical problems, the situation went from bad to worse.

The season got off to a good start at one of his favourite tracks: Bautista claimed third place in Race 2 at Phillip Island. It would remain his only podium of 2026. The rest of the season brought five fourth-place finishes—three at Assen and two at the Jerez finale—as Speedweek recounts.

"People on the outside don’t know what problems we have in the garage or what we’re trying," the Spanish rider told his German colleagues. "From the outside, people only ever see the results, never the full picture. This year I had to change everything: the team, the bike; we had no baseline to work from." Ducati introduced a new homologated model for 2026 and, according to Bautista, "Unfortunately, this bike is made for bigger riders. It wasn’t like in 2019, when I arrived and was immediately very fast."

The comparison with the other Ducati riders was unforgiving: "I was struggling because all the Ducati riders were fast except me. So we had to work. We knew our potential and wanted to be at the front from the start. Not being there made us want to find something magical. Going from one session to the next and suddenly being at the front—but that just doesn’t happen with a bike."

That very search triggered the downward spiral. "It got worse with every race," continued the rider with 63 Superbike victories. "At Assen, the bike allowed me to be consistent. But we wanted to move further forward, and instead things kept getting worse. The feel deteriorated, and my confidence in the bike dropped".

Up until Magny-Cours in September, the team changed something every day—and these were no minor tweaks: "By different, I don’t mean another fork spring, but major changes, like a different chassis." The turning point came after the summer break, when the team chose as its baseline the solution Bautista considered the lesser of two evils. "My confidence gradually returned. Once we had something clear, we could try something that would help me in a specific area. So we took it one step at a time. Better performances brought better results too."

Starting from scratch with a new team also took its toll. "I didn’t know the team and they didn’t know me; it’s not easy," Bautista admitted. Rain wiped out the winter tests, and the only dry day, at Misano in May, came just after his ankle surgery, which forced him to miss that opportunity as well.

At Jerez a few days ago, Alvaro Bautista said goodbye to the Barni team, and he does not have a place on the 2027 World Superbike grid. "Nobody wants to take on six kilos of ballast," he says bitterly. The former world champion has been linked with CFMoto, which is developing the V4 SR-RR ahead of a likely debut at the final round, which will be held in Shanghai. The Chinese brand’s racing operations are managed by Jorge Aspar Martinez, who won the 125cc World Championship with Bautista in 2006. They know each other extremely well, making them a proven pairing. "This isn’t the time to commit to a rider of this calibre," Aspar says, sounding a note of caution. Clearly, the CFMoto Superbike project is still at a very early stage. Bautista will turn 42 in 2027, but he is still in superb shape. A champion of his calibre would be the best possible endorsement for the ambitions of the Dragon brand.

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