Nicolo Bulega's (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) rocking start to the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship season was dealt a scare as during his FP1, he was sent careening into the gravel as he crashed off the track. The Championship leader was discharged from the medical centre with only contusions to his right ankle and left knee, a fortunate diagnosis for the title hopes for the 25-year-old Italian.

Prior to the crash, he was in his usual form, near the top of the timesheet despite the chilly conditions at the Autodrom Most, which had seen rainfall overnight and by the start of the Free Practice 1, still had wet patches. Prior to Bulega’s Turn 6 crash, Andrea Iannone (Team Pata Go Eleven) had suffered a big highside crash as well at Turn 21. His fellow Italian was dealt tougher news from the medical centre however, Iannone suffered fractures to the third and fourth toes on his right foot and will be unable to race the rest of this weekend at Most.

Reflecting on the FP1 crash Bulega said: “It was important for me to ride today and after a big crash like this morning it is important to ride the bike again and regain the feeling with the bike. Unfortunately, it was a very big crash, I have some pain all over my body but luckily it was not worse. I’m quite happy with the FP2, because I didn’t try a lot but the feeling with the bike was not so bad. We can definitely improve something so not so bad in the end. I still don’t understand exactly, because I was not pushing 100%. The lap before I was pushing much more, but I was on a cooldown lap that lap and it was a spectacular crash with the throttle closed completely. I understood I was crashing after I was already on the ground.”

Despite only running 9 laps compared to the generally 15-20 laps of the other riders; in that limited time, he was able to lay down the fourth-fastest lap across both practice sessions. Last year at Most, Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) was untouchable as he went on to win a Czech hat-trick.

Summarising his Friday in total, and looking ahead to Saturday, Bulega said: “Honestly today I had some pain especially in my foot on the bike, on this track there is a lot of changing of direction which can be difficult but anyway I will never give up and I will give 100% every lap and we will see after the weekend. In FP2 my pace was not too good, but it was also not bad. I was still thinking about this morning’s crash, which didn’t help my lap time, but tomorrow I will forget about this crash, and I can be faster.”

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