SBK Most Practice 3: Bautista sets the pace, Petrucci grits his teeth, but there’s not much to smile about at BMW

Iker Lecuona topped the Superbike practice at Most, ahead of Yari Montella and Garrett Gerloff. However, the trio used the SCO tire, which here serves as the qualifying compound, while Nicolò Bulega focused on race pace.

The championship leader, unbeaten for five full rounds (sixteen wins in a row), stayed out for the entire duration of the final session (twenty minutes) to assess the behavior of the race tire. On this very demanding track, riders will have to choose between the well-known D0922, widely used here and at Phillip Island, or the F0468 evolution, which has never been used before. It’s a serious question mark for the race outcome. Bulega, however, was blisteringly fast, 1'30"850, just half a second off his teammate Lecuona on the soft.

Danilo Petrucci also made progress in this session, setting the fifth fastest time. But the same applies to the Umbrian rider as mentioned earlier: he made the jump with the softer tire. The goal is to qualify as far forward as possible because Turn 1 is a bottleneck where crashes often happen: starting in the first two rows is an insurance policy. Here at Most, Danilo Petrucci made the podium every time when he raced with Barni Ducati, for a total of six finishes. But repeating that with BMW won’t be easy, because the field is very tight yet the Ducatis, even with less fuel, remain out of reach. At Most last year, Toprak Razgatlioglu won two races, only to be pipped in the Race 2 sprint by Nicolò Bulega, who rocketed out of the final corner. Petrucci is coming off the disastrous Balaton weekend, where Miguel Oliveira was seriously injured. The Portuguese rider’s return isn’t imminent—July at the Donington round is being mentioned—so an absence of three rounds, a quarter of the season. BMW no longer has an ace up its sleeve.

The three-time World Champion went off track at the final corner, prompting race direction to stop the session with 1'18" remaining. Alvaro Bautista was taken to the medical center for a check-up. Updates will follow; in the meantime, it has been announced that the Barni team rider will not be able to race.