2026 Dutch WorldSBK Friday Practice Reaction: Bulega sweeps day one

Vierge up to third and back to leading the Yamaha charge. 0.410s behind Bulega and the only Yamaha in the top-10.

Smits, the wildcard, has gone down at turn eight. Looks to be okay.

All-Ducati top-five now as Bautista goes fourth ahead of Baldassarri.

Yamaha have traditionally been strong here in Assen. Of course, they won here last year with Andrea Locatelli, but also both of Remy Gardner's podiums have come at Assen, including in Race 2 last year.

This weekend, though, the harder tyre allocation brought by Pirelli, from which the SCQ is absent which means the SCX tyre can only be used in Superpole and the Superpole race, not the long races, has led to expectations of a struggle for the R1 riders this weekend.

Xavi Vierge was up in fifth this morning, but the top Yamaha at the moment in FP2 is Locatelli. Vierge's 13th, then Gardner is 17th, Manzi 20th and the Motoxracing machines are 21st and 22nd.

Wildcard Twan Smits is also on a Yamaha and currently 18th.

Lecuona looks to have finished his first run now, and ends it with a personal best lap: 1m34.017s. Still not a 1m33s but he's getting closer.

Sam Lowes now back up to second, 0.035s ahead of Lecuona but still over 0.4s behind Bulega and not in the 1m33s.

Looks like Bulega has brought his opening run to an end now. Think all of his laps apart from the first one were in the 1m33s.

Lecuona faster again and now within half-a-second of Bulega - still no one else in the 1m33s.

Baldassarri up to third now as well, 0.001s ahead of Sam Lowes who has been bumped down to fourth now.

Bulega still on his first run and still doing 1m33s. Ballistic pace from the championship leader and fairly daunting for everyone else.

Lecuona makes it a factory Ducati 1-2, but he's 0.6s behind his teammate. Incredible pace from Bulega so far.

Bulega down into the 1m33s now and deep into them as well - 1m33.687s leaves him 0.801s clear at the top of the times. No one else even in the 1m33s all day.

Bulega fastest now and down to a 1m34.120s, 0.402s clear at the top ahead of Sam Lowes, then it's Alex Lowes in third.

Pace straight into the 1m34s with Bassani at the front at the beginning of FP2.  Montella second and already faster than what he did this morning.

Dry conditions remain as we mentioned for FP2. We have 19C of air temperature and 26C of track temperature with just a couple of minutes remaining before this afternoon's practice.

Air temperature is about 5C higher than what we had this morning, and track temperature has climbed by around 6C.

Just to briefly recap FP1, Nicolo Bulega was fastest this morning in an all-Ducati top-four. Iker Lecuona, Sam Lowes, and Lorenzo Baldassarri completed that.

Alvaro Bautista, Yari Montella, and Tarran Mackenzie were also in the top-10 for Ducati.

Xavi Vierge was the top non-Ducati rider in fifth.

Danilo Petrucci was sixth-fastest and the best of the BMWs, although both he and Miguel Oliveira suffered crashes in the final 15 minutes.

It's remained a cloudy day in Assen today, but the dry weather from this morning has remained for this afternoon ahead of WorldSBK FP2, which is now just 20 minutes away.

Superpole is over for the Sportbike class.

Veneman takes pole from Buis and Xavi Artigas, 0.217s splitting the front row. Pole time was just under six seconds faster than last year's WorldSSP300 pole.

Sportbike has just under 10 minutes to go in its Superpole session. Veneman, who was fastest this morning, currently on provisional pole by a colossal 0.006s over Jeffrey Buis!

Welcome back to live coverage of today's WorldSBK action from Assen. FP2 is due to start in jjust under 45 minutes at 15:00 local time.