Nicolò Bulega finished ahead of everyone in the Portimão tests, setting a time of 1'59.144 on Thursday, which was 39 thousandths of a second better than Iker Lecuona's time. But that's irrelevant, because the most important thing is the disappointment of not having performed as he had hoped.
Unfortunately, the bad weather ruined everyone's plans, so all we can do is look forward to Australia.
"Unfortunately, we haven't been very lucky with the weather this winter. We had four test days, and there was a lot of water every day, with poor track conditions. At Portimão, we rode in the rain, and it went reasonably well, but not great, partly because we had a new bike. It was very important to be able to test a few things before going to Australia but, unfortunately, there wasn't much we could do."
Now there's Australia...
"Phillip Island is my favorite track, and I hope to find good weather there. The winter tests were a bit useless, so we'll try to ride in Australia during the test the week before the race, hoping to at least find good weather."
How disappointed are you about this pre-season?
"It's too bad, because we had a new bike, and it was essential for us to ride to verify that everything was working properly. Unfortunately, however, we weren't able to do that. Maybe we should really consider testing somewhere else because this costs a lot of money and it's useless."