On the heels of his dominant display Down Under, in which he topped every session apart from the Sunday Warm Up, Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) weathered an early crash to take P2 in Day 1 of testing at Portimao. The Italian hopes to further fortify his P1 position in the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship with another strong showing in the upcoming Pirelli Portuguese Round, set for March 27^th-29^th. While he suffered a crash early in the session, he was uninjured, and while rain limited running on track, he has shown that he has the speed to be at the head of the pack again in Algarve.

TAKING A TUMBLE: “Physically, I feel fine; luckily, there are no lingering issues”

Before the afternoon’s rainfall, Bulega looked to be firing on all cylinders, sitting in P1 at the head of the field. That came to a sudden end at Turn 14 as he crashed on his 20^th lap. He and Xavi Vierge (Pata Maxus Yamaha) -who was unable to avoid the Italian’s bike- were both uninjured after the fall, but as afternoon rain fell on track, #11 only went on to record another five laps right before the end of the session.

On his crash, Bulega said: “It was an up and down day, but the feeling was good this morning. Physically, I feel fine after the crash; there are no lingering issues. It was a strange crash, but we’ve already checked the data and understood why it happened. I’m really sorry for Vierge because he also crashed behind me. After the crash its started raining, and I spent most of the day in the garage apart from five laps at the end of the day to make sure the bike was working well for tomorrow.”

FINDING THE FEELING: “I’m happy with how I felt on track; I was able to ride naturally”

While his early crash and subsequent afternoon rainfall limited him to just 19 full laps, he showed his prodigious pace in that short showing. A 1’41.541s effort on his 12^th Lap sent him to P1 early in the day before he was later outpaced by Alex Lowes (bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team), whose 1’40.622s time clocked in quicker by over half a second. While the speed is certainly a promising sign, with the lack of testing time on track this preseason, ‘Bulegas’ was focused today on progressing with the setup at this track, but once again, rain made its presence felt.

On his Day 1 takeaways, Bulega said: “The feeling with the bike this morning was actually very good. Despite the crash, I’m happy with how I felt on track; I was able to ride naturally. Today’s goal was to work on the bike's setup ahead of the next race here in Portimao. Unfortunately, due to the rain, we couldn't get as much track time as we hoped, and we didn't manage to finish the full work program we had planned.”

Tune in for full race weekend coverage to see Bulega’s fight for the title with the WorldSBK VideoPass!