Alvaro Bautista leaves the Suzuki MotoGP team and will race aboard Gresini Honda’s for ’12.
After beginning his MotoGP career two years ago with Suzuki,
Alvaro Bautista will be leaving the Japanese brand and joining the Gresini Honda team for ’12. The Spanish rider will ride the new 1000cc Honda RC213V.
“I am very sad to be leaving
Suzuki after the two great years that I have had here,” said Bautista. It has been a great team to work in and I have learnt a lot of things from everyone in the team. It was a fantastic experience working with an English/Japanese team and we have become like a big family, except we have never had any arguments and no-one falls out with each other! I want to thank everybody personally for the last two years, sometimes it has been difficult, but nobody ever gave up and I felt like I always had their full support and commitment.”
Bautista will get his first opportunity to pilot the
Honda today during the final day of testing at the Valencia circuit in southeastern Spain.
It’s still unclear whether Suzuki will continue to compete in the premier prototype class as it hasn’t released any information on a new 1000cc platform or rider contract for ’12.
