SBK Donington FP3: The privateers heat up, but “the Cat” Bulega lies in wait

The final glimpse of free practice brings to the fore the best independents of this Superbike season: Sam Lowes with the Panigale of the late Count Marc van der Straten and Yari Montella with the twin Ducati from the Barni team. But they used soft tires, while Nicolò Bulega worked for the race. Do the front-runner’s rivals have any chance?

More than the coup by the first two, which has an easy technical explanation, the FP3 headline is actually Iker Lecuona edging out his teammate by a whisker. The two factory Ducatis used the last twenty minutes to sharpen their claws ahead of Race 1, which gets underway today at 16:30 Italian time to avoid overlapping with the MotoGP sprint. Barring sensational upsets, even in Great Britain it will be a family affair between Iker and Nicolò.

On the cooler track, lap times tumbled compared to Friday, and in Superpole later on, the 1'24"629 set on a single lap in 2024 by Toprak Razgatlioglu looks like very easy prey to attack. The soft-tire game has somewhat “skewed” the standings, which show “only” four Ducatis at the top. The others have closed in a bit, particularly Bimota with Alex Lowes always highly effective on this East Midlands rollercoaster. Honda woke up too with Jake Dixon (seventh fastest) and Yamaha with Xavi Vierge right behind. But to understand if this is anything serious compared to the gloom of the day before, we’ll have to wait at least for Superpole, when everyone will be on track with the same SCQ, the qualifying special.

Unfortunately, not even in this last session did we see any signs of a comeback from Danilo Petrucci. In fact, it went worse than Friday, with a last-place time that leaves very little hope of salvaging this BMW weekend that started terribly. The three races on British soil, seen from the back, look like a brutally steep mountain to climb.

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