World BK Race 1 in the Portuguese round at Portimao this weekend was marked by a race-spanning battle between Top Lac Laz Gatrioguru and Nicolo Brega, but it was Scott Redding and Alvaro Bautista who produced the main flash point for the race.
The two contacted and crashed on Turn 4 in the opening lap incident. After the race, Bautista – Nicolo Brega’s drift with 26 points over the weekend came second in the World Superbike Rider’s ranking, but after Race 1, he is 46 points behind in sixth place, but the incident became clear, saying it was because of Reading, who was trying to apologise for him.
“Scott (Redding) hit me,” Bautista said in his media report, as reported by worldsbk.com.
“I don’t want to talk to him. I’m not the type of person who wants to talk to him.
“I was shocked. He was inside, but he was behind me. I don’t know if he crashed and touched me or if he crashed me. When I was in the corner, I was shocked and crashed.
“When you crash and you’re not guilty, and when you think the other rider is guilty, maybe you’re (angrily).
“He asked me: “Are you okay?”
“If he wasn’t guilty, he would have come to me (angry), but he (apologises). That’s it. That’s the problem, and the problem with f*cking.”
Bautista showed that in 2025, fellow Ducati riders Redding felt they needed to “respect” their brandmates, and that British riders lacked that, at least for Bautista himself.
“I’m an official rider, so I need to at least respect my factory teammates,” Bautista said.
“And don’t f*ck with me for the last few years.
“Then you have the same bike as me, and even that, you’re still pushing there, and isn’t it enough? And you push me out, it seems that it’s the only way to do something.
“That’s the problem, I’m a factory rider and he has to be very careful.
“All riders, especially riders from the same manufacturer, especially riders who are factory riders from the same manufacturer. That’s the problem.”
Reading: “He said I took him out, that’s weird…”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Reading had a different view on the incident.
Explaining the incident from his perspective, Redding told WorldSBK.com: “That was a shame. I got off to a really good start. I think I got up to the ninth. My plan was to finish the top 8 or top 6.
“I got off to a good start. That was the goal. And I made those positions and then I went into turn 4.
“I had to hand over Remy (Gardner) to Turn 5. I was making that plan in my head and I felt I was pushing to the left side of my body and the rear came in and crashed.
“I looked at the gravel, Alvaro (Bautista) was there and he was crashing in front of me.
“Then I wanted to talk to him, but I couldn’t get close to him because he was always there. So I wasn’t really sure.”
Reading said that while the Spanish rider’s positive angle from the bike meant that Reading was never visible, he was able to see the Bautista onboard camera, which was also shown on television.
“Just before I came here, I was watching it from the onboard from Alvaro, and I was in front of him and I was in fact in front of Gardner, but I knew he had a better exit than me, so I went out a little bit,” Reading explained.
“I was on Gardner’s wheel, I went into 4 turns 4. Everything was fine, and then there was drama all of a sudden.
“I heard him say he’d taken him away.
“I wasn’t mad after the crash that I took him away or that he took me away. It was a race incident and I want to know what happened.
“The only thing I could think of from within his ship is that he should have seen me, because I was in front of him in turn before him.
“He was behind me, what did I do, look right, then go then?”
Reading admitted that his relationship with Bautista was not the best, but strengthened that he was not trying to take him away.
“We don’t have the best relationship, but I’m not going to take riders out, I’m sure it’s the same for him,” he said.
“I can’t even say I’m sorry because I didn’t do anything. It was nothing.
“If there’s another camera of what happened, I’d like to see it in the direction of the race, but from his ship I was in front of him until turn 4. That was a shame for both of us.”