Nicolo Bulega plays down Australia WorldSBK victory hopes after dominant Friday

After two days of testing and one day of free practice at Phillip Island, Nicolo Bulega has finished fastest in every World Superbike session that has been run this week, but the Italian hasn’t taken victory for granted just yet.

Bulega was 0.4 seconds clear of Andrea Iannone on Friday at this weekend’s World Superbike Australian Round, and the Go Eleven rider was the only one within half-a-second of last year’s Phillip Island Race 1 winner.

However, the 2023 World Supersport Champion isn’t expecting a victory to fall into his lap on Saturday.

“No, because testing is just testing,” Bulega told WorldSBK.com when asked if anything other than a win would be a disappointment on Saturday.

“Okay, I was the fastest, but every time racing is different because there are a lot of things that you have to control more – especially here because we have to do the flag-to-flag and it’s one more thing that you have to pay attention to.

“Also, I’m in the left position to change the tyres in the pit lane, so for me it’s even more difficult because I have to make a turn to the left, a turn to the right in the middle of a lot of mechanics, also from other teams, so it’s even more difficult.”

Nicolo Bulega names podium rivals for Australian WorldSBK

The Italian identified a number of riders who he felt could be on the podium in Saturday’s opening race of the season.

“I think there are going to be a lot of very fast riders,” he said.

“I think right now there is me, then [Andrea] Iannone, Toprak [Razgatlioglu], Alvaro [Bautista], [Danilo] Petrucci, [Andrea] Locatelli, so it’s a big group for the podium.”

Overall, last year’s WorldSBK runner-up was content with his opening day of the weekend, and of the season.

“My day one was very good,” he said.

“We tried to improve a little bit from testing and I think we improved something; not everything that we tried, but some we had some little improvements.

“So, I’m happy for my Friday feeling, and we have to see tomorrow for the track temperature that will be much higher [than on Friday], so we have to understand with the team if we have to adjust something on the bike and me on my riding style.”

Bulega explained that between the FP1 session on Friday morning and the afternoon’s second practice his feeling on the bike changed. Looking ahead to Saturday, when highs of 32 Celsius are forecast, the Italian had cause for concern despite his position of dominance on-paper after Friday.

“Today from FP1 to FP2 in the afternoon I feel the track temperature a bit higher,” he said.

“I think tomorrow, if you see the weather, will be much more, so we can have some hotter problems, but we will try.”

He added: “I had very good race pace, but in the afternoon– I still had a good race pace, but the feeling was not very good like this morning.

“So, we have to study very well the data of this afternoon to understand what we need to do for hot track temperatures.”