Nicolo Bulega executes “perfect" French WorldSBK Race 2 after “very bad” Saturday

Nicolo Bulega secured a third career WorldSBK race win in Race 2 at Magny-Cours, rebounding after a tough Saturday.

Bulega had qualified on the front row in Superpole, but crashed on the first lap of Race 1. He’d hurt his shoulder in the process, which complicated his Sunday, but also made his Superpole Race-Race 2 double on Sunday all the more important.

“It’s incredible,” Bulega told WorldSBK.com. “I needed a day like this after Saturday because that was a very bad day for us. I was fast all weekend from the beginning, but it was very difficult to put it all together especially with the strange weather conditions.

“I felt that I had the speed, but it was difficult to put it all together.

“Today, finally, I put it all together and won the Superpole Race and Race 2.

“It’s incredible, thanks to all my team and all the doctors because they helped me have less pain after Race 1’s huge crash.”

Bulega’s strategy for success in Race 2 had been a simple one: push from the start to create a gap, so that any fatigue in his injured shoulder would be less impactful on the result if it started to emerge in the second half of the race.

“I tried to push a lot from the beginning because I knew that maybe from half race distance, I could start to have problems with my shoulder,” Bulega explained. “I tried to make a gap in the opening laps, so I was able to reduce the rhythm a little bit at the end of the race if I needed to.

“Petrucci was very fast today so I tried to maintain the gap. In the end, it was a perfect race.”

Bulega’s double triumph on Sunday came after Toprak Razgatlioglu crashed out of the weekend on Friday, suffering a collapsed lung in an FP2 crash.

His wins mean that the Italian is now 55 points behind the Turkish rider, who had won 13 races in a row before the French Round, ahead of another home race for Bulega at Cremona in two weeks.

“I’m really sorry that Toprak [Razgatlioglu] had this problem because he crashed in a very fast and difficult point,” Bulega said.

“I knew that I had the opportunity to take some points and I tried to do my best today; I tried also on Saturday, but it wasn’t like Sunday.

“Toprak will be very fast like always, so he’ll be strong. I don’t know if can beat him but, for sure, I will try.”