Aruba.it Ducati bounced back to end the opening day of practice for Round 2 of the 2024 WorldSBK Championship at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya holding down a Friday 1-2 with Nicolo Bulega leading Alvaro Bautista.

The factory outfit - which dominated across the entire Catalunya WorldSBK weekend in 2023 with Bautista - looked on the back foot in FP1 as ROKiT BMW Motorrad turned heads by occupying the top two spots with Toprak Razgatlioglu and Michael van der Mark.

However, while not all riders in the 23-strong field would go quicker during the hotter afternoon session, Bulega and Bautista would make comfortably the biggest gains between the sessions to lift themselves past the M 1000 RR duo come the end of play.

A race winner on his debut in Australia last month, Bulega sparkled again as the only rider to dip below 1m 41secs, his 1m 40.907secs lap - which came in the closing stages of FP2 - proving good enough to hold Bautista at bay by two tenths of a second.

Despite lapping slower than their morning bests, Razgatlioglu and van der Mark’s FP1 times were good enough to hold down third and fourth respectively, while Pata PROMETEON Yamaha continued the pattern by holding fifth and sixth on the end of day timesheets, Jonathan Rea ahead of Andrea Locatelli.

A strong day for Ducati all-round, satellite standouts Andrea Iannone, Danilo Petrucci and Sam Lowes complemented their factory counterparts by joining Bulega and Bautista inside the top ten in seventh, eighth and ninth, as Remy Gardner reeled off the top ten.

Elsewhere, there were mixed fortunes for the British contingent, not least early WorldSBK points’ leader Alex Lowes, the KawasakI Racing Team rider left with some work to do overnight after ending his Friday down in 14th overall.

Behind him, fellow Brits Scott Redding ended his day down in 17th, with Brad Ray in 21st and Tarran Mackenzie in 22nd.

🇪🇸 ⏱️ 2024 Catalunya WorldSBK | Friday Free Practice Results [Combined]

Friday | Conditions - Dry, Sunny