A few days after the official announcement of Nicolò Bulega’s arrival in Superbike with Ducati in 2024, on the Magny-Cours weekend the Italian rider gave a major shake-up to the Supersport rankings. The championship leader in fact prevailed in both rounds of the French stage, extending his lead in the ranking over Stefano Manzi to a good sixty points.
After starting from pole, which was also achieved with the record lap of the track, in Race 1 Bulega immediately attempted to impose his own pace, already having a good margin after just a few corners while his rivals battled it out. From that moment on, the rider from the Borgo Panigale company took off, imposing a pace that was unattainable for his rivals, so much so that he could count on a safety gap of two seconds after just five laps.
However, there was no shortage of duels behind the Italian, starting with those to confirm himself in second place and chase down the leader of the classification. Montella and Manzi immediately battled, while Raffaele de Rosa crashed at the hairpin on the opening lap of the race while in fourth place, fortunately without suffering any physical consequences. In the following lap, following a mistake in turn two by Montella, Manzi was able to take advantage of the opportunity by climbing into second position, which allowed him to chase Bulega.
Nicolo Bulega
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
While the Yamaha rider slowly managed to get closer to the race leader, so much so that he was back under second with a few laps to go, Montella instead followed the opposite path, slipping backwards in the standings: nine laps from the flag in fact, in chess, the Italian was overtaken by Niki Tuuli, thus dropping to ninth position which he then had to defend at the end from Marcel Schroetter’s attacks. Behind them the gaps were quite significant, with Federico Caricasulo eighth ahead of Bahattin Sofuoglu and Lorenzo dalla Porta. Meanwhile, home idol Valentin Debise managed to climb back up to the podium area, overtaking Huertas.
Despite the final rush, Manzi never really managed to worry Bulega who, despite the small margin at the finish line, always managed the situation with authority, taking home the first victory of the weekend.
As in Saturday’s race, in Race 2 Bulega started from pole and immediately pulled ahead of his rivals, with a Ducati hat-trick in the lead made up of the Italian, De Rosa and Montella. A few moments later, however, a fight between the two gave Debise the opportunity to take advantage of the situation and first overtake Montella, which was then also followed by overtaking De Rosa, thus giving Bulega the opportunity to pull ahead.
Valentin Debise
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
However, thanks to a series of fast laps, the Frenchman was able to get back on the Emilian, so much so that he reduced the gap to a few tenths towards the halfway point of the race. The leading duo maintained an uncatchable pace for the rest of the group, opening a considerable five-second margin over the Manzi-De Rosa duo, who in turn could count on an advantage of around two seconds over Tuuli and Montella. However, as the race continued, the Ducati Italian began to lose positions, until his final retirement with eight laps to go due to a technical problem while he was in seventh position. The ranking was thus redrawn with Bulega ahead of Debies, who was followed by Manzi, Tuuli, Schroetter, Dalla Porta, Huertas and Montella, who in the meantime slipped to the bottom of the chasing group.
If in front Bulega had now been able to repel Debies’ attacks by once again imposing a small safety margin, behind them in the final laps the most heated duels were seen, with a continuous exchange of positions between Schroetter, Tuuli and Dalla Porta for fourth place of the day. Taking advantage of the intense fight between the Finnish and the Italian, the German driver of the MV Augusta was able to extend his lead and secure fourth position ahead of Tuuli and Dalla Porta himself, protagonists of a good fight that ended with a masterful overtaking in the rapid chicane 12-13. Behind them, Adrian Huertas, Yari Montella, Jorge Navarro and Federico Cadicasulo finished, while Sofuoglu’s crash should be noted just three laps before the checkered flag.
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