A꧟lvaro Bautisꦕta heads into round three of the 2018 MotoGP season, at Austin this weekend, with just three points to his name.

Those points came from 13th place in the season-opening Qatar MotoGP with Bautista, like team-mate Karel Abraham, o🥃utside the top 15 in Argentina.

At the same time last season Bautista had scored 13-points, bu✨t he still seeking the right feeling from the 2017 Ducati.

"We know that once we fix a few small details there might not be a huge difference to the lap time but ꧋the position should improve significantly," said the Spaniard.

"We head to the United States feeling very motivated for the last race before we return to Europe and꧂ we want to go ba🅘ck there in good shape.

"It hasn't been the start to the season that we would have liked,🌸 but we will keep working non-stop in every session to improve the bike.

"Te💧rmas was difficult because of the weather but we f🦹ound some positive things that should prove useful in the future.”

Adding to Bautista's urgency will be that fellow GP17 riders Jack Miller and Tito Rab🐽at are holding 6th and 11th in the world championship, while he is down in 17th.

Abraham is also playing catch-up relative to his 2017 form, with one point this season compared with 8 last season, again riding a two-year-o💖ld bike.

“This [COTA] is the ♒last of a run of races outside Europe and it takes place at a difficult ci🐓rcuit, which features a lot of high-speed direction changes, elevation changes and blind corners.

"I go the🅷re feeling eager to do a good job and to keep working hard to improve on the results we have had in the first couple of races of the season.

"Since the race 𒁏in Argentina I have stayed in America and competed in a Spartan Race last week, which was good fun and I also came away with a good result.”