Iker Lecuona blames weather for Estoril WorldSBK blunder that gave Nicolo Bulega win
Iker Lecuona says the wind caused him to make a mistake at turn one in the Estoril WorldSBK Superpole Race.
Unpredictable wind has been stated as the cause for Iker Lecuona’s costly mistake in the WorldSBK Superpole Race at Estoril.
Lecuona led at the start of the race, launching better than Nicolo Bulega off the line.
Bulega sat behind his team-mate for a couple of laps, before Lecuona lost control in braking for turn one on lap three and went wide. Lecuona just about rejoined in front of Miguel Oliveira to keep second, but he couldn’t get back to Bulega to challenge for the win before the finish.
Iker Lecuona said afterwards that the mistake came as a surprise to him, and that inconsistent wind was a factor in his costly error.
“I didn’t expect that huge mistake from myself,” Lecuona told the WorldSBK world feed after the Superpole Race.
“The thing is that the wind isn’t constant, sometimes it arrives stronger, and I didn’t expect it so I had a lot of pick-up on the rear and I could not stop.
“I almost arrived to the gravel, so when I came back I said ‘I f*cked my race’.
“But in any case I’m really happy because we found something on the bike – I feel comfortable, very fast, honestly, during the race. I could also recover the gap with Nicolo [Bulega] that’s also very important for myself.
“Now we need to check all the tyre performance for the long race that is completely different, that we need to manage that dropping.
“But in any case I’m happy. Let’s see if we can do another small step for the long race and we can be with Nicolo until the end.”
For Bulega, the win was his 28th of the season, a record for one rider, the Italian surpassing Alvaro Bautista’s 2023 tally by one. For Ducati, it was a 36th consecutive win, going back to Race 2 at Estoril last year, a new outright record.
Alex joined the Crash.net team in August of 2024 having covered consumer and racing motorcycle news at Visordown for two years.
