Ducati Sporting Club UK > News Items > Ducati Press Releases > Bulega tops the timesheets in free practice for the Italian Round at Cremona. It was a difficult Friday for Bautista, who concluded in eigth place

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World Superbike | 2025 | R4 | Cremona (Italy) | Friday 2 May 2025

Bulega tops the timesheets in free practice for the Italian Round at Cremona. It was a difficult Friday for Bautista, who concluded in eigth place

The Superbike World Championship has finally arrived in Italy. The Cremona Circuit hosts the Italian Round, the fourth event of the 2025 WorldSBK season.

At the end of Friday's free practice, Nicolò Bulega was the fastest on track. The Aruba.it Racing - Ducati rider seemed to have a great feeling with the bike from the first laps of the morning and ended FP1 with a time of 1'29.158. This will be the best time of the day, although in FP2 Bulega will again set the ‘fastest lap’ (1'29.250).

For Alvaro Bautista , Friday was full of pitfalls. After the crash in FP1 that kept him in the pits for a long time, in FP2, the Spanish rider was involved in two other minor crashes that will be analysed above all because they occurred in circumstances in which he was not pushing hard enough. Despite everything, Bautista found a convincing feeling in the laps completed in the afternoon.

Nicolò Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati #11)
"It was a positive day. I felt good right from the start, even though this track is not suited to my riding style. I could ride consistently and find good continuity on the race pace".

Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati #19)
"It's clear that you can't be happy after three crashes. However, the conviction remains that we found a positive feeling this afternoon. We'll analyse what happened, but it's clear that the crashes in FP2 were due to problems that I'm sure the team will be able to solve".