Nicolo Bulega hails “good Friday” at Misano WorldSBK after FP2 recovery

Despite dominance on the time sheets, Nicolo Bulega’s opening day at the Misano WorldSBK was not as straightforward as it seemed from the outside, he says.

Bulega was over 0.3 seconds clear at the top of the times at Misano for much of the afternoon practice, although that was trimmed to 0.059 seconds by the end of FP2.

The Italian had also been fastest in FP1, but it was in that opening session that Bulega encountered some troubles that he had to rectify in the afternoon.

“It was a good Friday,” Nicolo Bulega told WorldSBK.com after FP2 at Misano.

“Honestly, this morning was not very good because, okay, I was fast, but the feeling with the bike was not like I want. 

“So, we improved a lot this afternoon, we come back with our standard bike and I enjoyed a lot more, the feeling was back, so I was able to make a good pace.”

Bulega explained that he had used a different setup compared to the recent two-day test at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli.

“We just tried something different on the setting,” he said.

“This morning we tried something new compared to the test, but honestly it was not the right way so we came back to our standard setting. Then it was a good session [in FP2].”

Second-fastest on Friday was Bulega’s team-mate Iker Lecuona, who has been second in each of the last 15 races. The Spaniard trails Bulega by 108 points after six rounds.

A win in Race 1 tomorrow for Bulega would extend his win streak – already standing alone as a record in WorldSBK – to 23 races, and would be his first WorldSBK win at Misano. Bulega has also been on pole at the opening six races this season; a fastest time in Superpole tomorrow would therefore give Bulega his seventh on the bounce to start the year, bringing him within one of the record set in 2021 by Jonathan Rea who was on pole in the first eight races in a row.