Video of the Mapfre Aspar 250cc Presentation

With grateful thanks as ever to the awesome stv21 for finding this :)

Bancaja Aspar Team Presentation Photo: Madrid, 25th February

Win a Limited Edition Team Aspar MotoGP Jacket with Teletext

> IN ASSOCIATION WITH TELETEXT <

Win a Limited Edition Aspar Team Jacket!

To help launch our new-look site, and to help celebrate the new MotoGP season, we have teamed up with legendary UK news service Teletext to bring you a truly unmissable competition....
By going to Teletext on ITV or Channel 4 - on the old blocky analogue pages or on your Freeview or Sky digital box - you can answer one very simple question to be up for winning one of the *extremely* limited edition ‘Spain-only’ official Aspar team jackets.
This really is an amazing prize for any Bati fan (and owning one myself I have to say they’re brilliant!)
We have donated the prize, and Teletext are running the competition across their analogue and digital television services on ITV and Channel 4, as well as on their website - and anybody is free to enter; although as you have to enter by a text message from your mobile phone, it may be impossible for those who live outside the UK. My advice would be that if this is the case that you get a friend in the UK to enter on your behalf!

The competition runs from February 25th to March 11th, and to enter you should go to ITV or Channel 4 (analogue, Freeview or Sky) press TEXT and go to page 108. If you are looking at the MotoGP or motorsport sections on Teletext you may well see banners promoting the competition too; so just follow the directions on them.


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About Teletext

Teletext's services on analogue and digital TV attract 13 million people every week, some 15 years after its launch. It also operates a news, sport, entartainment and informational website as well as the Teletext Holidays, Teletext Cars and Teletext Games websites, and runs a number of services for mobile phones.
So whether you're looking for a fantastic holiday, the latest score, entertainment gossip, up-to-date headlines, market updates or this week's winning lotto numbers, Teletext is making sure you are never more than a press of a button away from the information you need.

Alvaro Bautista Fansites, Forum & Blog Overhauled For 2008

Well - as I’m sure you will have noticed as you are already looking at the blog here, things have all gone a bit red.... but it's not just here - it's also the main alvarobautista.co.uk website, the batifans forum, and our fanshop too.
Me & stv21 wanted to reflect the new livery (no matter how attached we are to the ‘old’ blue white and orange!) and to make sure our websites are seen as completely up-to-date and completely “2008” - as a truly top-flight international fansite empire should be...!
So a few weeks back, pretty much as soon as we first saw the new 2008 red livery first out on track in testing, we got working on overhauling the website design; updating the main site, the forum, the fanshop (and contents) and the blog - there's been an awful lot to do; first getting the look right in mockups - and then building it all afresh - not only graphics but stylesheets, templates and all kinds of stuff! Followed by a lot of testing.

Along with changing the colours on the sites, you will notice we have added new 'red' wallpapers, signatures and forum avatars on the batifans forum, as well as some new e-cards on the main site.

Some things about the design we have kept fundamentally the same - the same basic typographic style with the big chunky Helvetica lettering, and some of the basic clean layout ideas and blocky graphics, but we have made the page headers a bit heavier by making more of the red (at least for now while we establish it as our new colour).

I hope you like the new look - and the new 'red' downloads and graphics, and the new 'red' gear in the FanShop - and that it all puts you in the 2008 mood!

Lightbox: Preseason Testing 2008

Jerez testing - 21/02/08 - Looking Good :)

Very encouraging time and position on day three...

1. Thomas Luthi – Aprilia – 1.43.208
2. Marco Simoncelli – Gilera – 1. 43.209
3. Alvaro Bautista – Aprilia – 1. 43.601
4. Julian Simon – KTM – 1. 43.802
5. Mika Kallio – KTM – 1. 43.859
6. Hiroshi Aoyama – KTM – 1. 43.869
7. Hector Faubel – Aprilia – 1. 44.183
8. Yuki Takahashi – Honda – 1. 44.333
9. Aleix Espargaro – Aprilia – 1. 44.373
10. Lukas Pesek – Aprilia – 1. 44.405
11. Mattia Pasini – Aprilia – 1. 44.626
12. Hector Barbera – Aprilia – 1. 44.777
13. Fabrizio Lai – Gilera – 1. 44.882
14. Karel Abraham – Aprilia – 1. 44.909
15. Alex Baldolini – Aprilia – 1. 44.977
16. Manuel Poggiali – Gilera – 1. 45.761
17. Alex Debon – Aprilia – 1. 46.046
18. Eugene Laverty – Aprilia – 1. 46.089
19. Russel Gomez – Aprilia – 1. 46.432
20. Ratthapark Wilairot – Honda – 1. 46.984
21. Doni Pradita – Yamaha – 1.49.900

Jerez testing - 20/02/08

DAY TWO...

1. Marco Simoncelli – Gilera – 1.44.602
2. Thomas Luthi – Aprilia – 1. 44.829
3. Hiroshi Aoyama – KTM – 1. 45.207
4. Alvaro Bautista – Aprilia – 1. 45.374
5. Mika Kallio – KTM – 1. 45.664
6. Julian Simon – KTM – 1. 46.068
7. Yuki Takahashi – Honda – 1. 46.118
8. Hector Faubel – Aprilia – 1. 46.183
9. Karel Abraham – Aprilia – 1. 46.246
10. Alex Debon – Aprilia – 1. 46.287
11. Lukas Pesek – Aprilia – 1. 46.374
12. Mattia Pasini – Aprilia – 1. 46.506
13. Alex Baldolini – Aprilia – 1. 46.743
14. Manuel Poggiali – Gilera – 1. 47.337
15. Eugene Laverty – Aprilia – 1. 47.364
16. Imre Toth – Aprilia – 1. 47.619
17. Hector Barbera – Aprilia – 1. 48.005
18. Fabrizio Lai – Gilera – 1. 48.449
19. Ratthapark Wilairot – Honda – 1. 49.079
20. Russel Gomez – Aprilia – 1.49.900
21. Doni Pradita – Yamaha – 1.50.031

Jerez testing - 19/02/08

Some rain today on the first of 3 days testing, but a little bit of running...

1. Mika Kallio (KTM) – 1’46”369 (12 giri)
2. Marco Simoncelli (Gilera) – 1’46”881 (10)
3. Hiroshi Aoyama (KTM) – 1’47”281 (14)
4. Julian Simon (KTM) – 1’47”296 (19)
5. Alvaro Bautista (Aprilia) – 1’47”487 (12)
6. Imre Toth (Aprilia) – 1’48”339 (13)
7. Yuki Takahashi (Honda) – 1’48”605 (14)
8. Ratthapark Wilairot (Honda) – 1’49”027 (17)
9. Lukas Pesek (Aprilia) – 1’49”374 (9)
10. Karel Abraham (Aprilia) – 1’49”692 (13)
11. Hector Barbera (Aprilia) – 1’49”780 (23)
11. Mattia Pasini (Aprilia) – 1’49”840 (16)
12. Hector Faubel (Aprilia) – 1’50”156 (12)
13. Eugene Laverty (Aprilia) – 1’50”773 (13)
14. Manuel Poggiali (Gilera) 1’51”288 (5)
15. Russel Gomez (Aprilia) – 1’52”844 (13)
16. Doni Tata Pradita (Yamaha) – 1’53”359 (14)

Announcing the RACECARD 2008 Competition...

(*Open to BatiFans.com forum members only)

Predict Alvaro's form across the 2008 season and win this amazing fan-bundle of a prize!

• "Alvaro Bautista" limited edition picture biography book
• IXO 1:24 scale 2005 Alvaro Bautista Honda model
• Alvaro Bautista documentary DVD
• Any item of your choice from our Alvaro Bautista Fanshop

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How the RACECARD 2008 competition works...
For every single 250cc Grand Prix in the 2008 season, the BatiFans.com Forum will have a "Racecard 2008" topic. In this topic any forum member can enter their prediction for how well Alvaro is going to do that weekend.
All they have to do is predict his final grid position and his race result.
For example:
Grid=5
Race=2

The person with the most points at the end of the season wins the fabby prize!
Click here for full details...

Valentines Day Icons For Mac OSX & Windows XP / Vista

Get over to BatiFans.com now to grab our latest icon pack - a special "lovehearts" set to celebrate Valentines Day.
Very cool and groovy icons to replace those boring old folder and document icons on your Mac or PC.
Happy Valentines Day!

Enjoy :)

Mapfre Aspar Aprilia 250cc Team Presentation

Well, we already knew about the colours, but just for the hell of it here's a picture of Bati and Fabuel in the new kit and with a new liveried bike at today's presentation; more pictures of which, along with quotes and comment, you can find here...

Mapfre Aspar Team Presentation Today

Apparently according to good sources (and when I say good sources I - as usual - mean stv21) the Aspar team presentation is suddenly upon us; at 11.30am today in Valencia.
250cc only I understand - Alvaro Bautista and Hector Faubel - so sadly no Pere, Gabor or Sergio.
Having said that can you imagine the eye damage from presenting the 250cc and 125cc colour schemes together... it doesn't bear thinking about really.
So go to BatiFans.com for reports and pictures once it's all over.
(Although there's a good chance we'll post something up here too...)

Quotes from Alvaro - Valencia Test

A few words from Bati following the Valencia testing at Cheste, courtesy of DailyMotos - and trasnlated with the help of Babelfish which kept insisting on translating Jerez as 'sherry'... ;)
"After three days in Jerez and three days here it is necessary to rest a little now. Here we have proven several things and mainly we have seen where it is possible to be improved further and that is very important. We have worked hard here but the feeling has not been as good as in Jerez although I go away satisfied... "

The overall tone of their piece was that things were basically going pretty well - and despite the odd note about not being as good as Jerez, it's nice to hear Bati sounding reasonably happy with things :)