Bulega undefeated halfway through WorldSBK 2026

He couldn’t… could he? The historic stats just kept coming at Aragon Motorland, and the results sheet is a horror movie script for anybody not on a Ducati despite increasingly harsh fuel flow penalties

Bulega won them all at Motorland. His team-mate was second each time.

And another (privateer) Ducati contestant was third in each race.

Bit more to it all than that, of course, so read on.

In the blistering heat of day one at Motorland Aragon, nobody was setting the lap times on fire to match the ambient air and track conditions (35°C and well over 50°C, respectively).

Come a slightly cooler day two, and Superpole Qualifying, and Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.It Racing – Ducati) lit his own untouchable afterburners to set a new track best lap time of 1’46.836.

This was, impossibly, almost half a second better than his own team-mate, Iker Lecuona, who also beat the previous best – if only just in his own case.

In Saturday’s slightly less extreme temperatures, Bulega gave another masterclass in heading off into a wild red yonder, to win by just 1.274 seconds from Lecuona that still felt like half a lap if he had wanted it to be.

An all Ducati podium was highly predictable, especially after there were nine Ducatis from the top 11 bikes at the end of Friday’s combined qualifying sheets. There were only seven from nine of the top places in Superpole Qualifying taken by Ducati riders, and six from seven after race one.

An almost perfect race from Alex Lowes (BbKRT) saw him fourth, but as he said himself (erroneously, as he was ‘only’ 16 seconds back from Bulega, not the 20 he thought it was), there was too big a gap to the winner.

Former BSB Champion Tommy Bridewell (Superbike Advocates) qualified seventh and put in a thumping fifth place, which he praised everyone else for, in a team that made a last-minute entry to WorldSBK this year, to say the least.

He also credited having so many (virtual, not literal) team-mates inside the greater Ducati awning, as he and everyone on a V4-R can look at each other’s data. Even if this did let him skip forward in his early season set-up slog, fifth place was still an astounding ride, acing his already top score of eighth at Autodrom Most last time out.

Sunday’s sSuperpole Race had, however fleetingly, the genuine prospect of a non-Bulega race win, as he was down the order on a harder tyre choice and watching Lecuona and Sam Lowes fight for the potential victory.

Eventually Bulega pushed on and just to prove that he can really play with the results if he wants, he set a new lap record of 1’47.709 on the very last lap to beat his team-mate by half a second.

Sam Lowes was riding on some extravagantly wide lines but still finished third.

The Superpole Race really gave everyone a chance to see that even if the final result was based on a finally better race-long tyre choice for Bulega (knowing it would come into its own later in the race) and that remarkable last lap push, a harder starting Lecuona in the first few laps may well have been at least in a last corner fight for this particular contest.

The final race of the weekend was, unfortunately, little like the Superpole one, with Bulega easing away to take another win and continue his perfect season. 18 wins from 18 this year is just astounding, but there have also been 15 second places in a row for Lecuona. Sam Lowes, not for the first time this year, took three third places over a weekend with his podium finish in Race Two.

Alex Lowes went fourth, for a 4-5-4 weekend which he himself said was realistically the best he could do. His team-mate Bassani was fifth, and good value for it as he had one of his better, and highly consistent weekends.

Once again, Gerloff put in one of his specials, and went from 13th on the grid to sixth, as the updated Kawasaki once more benefitted from a better 2026 aero package, some engine and electronic improvements (possibly driven by the bimota side of things) and most importantly in the final race, a simple good start and strong early laps.

In the championship standings, the bare statistics reads like a scary film script for anybody who wants to see a wide open championship, and one of their non-Ducati riders in with a chance.

Bulega has a truly perfect 372 points, Lecuona is already 108 behind with 264, and Sam Lowes is 230 points behind Bulega and a mere 122 off the total of Lecuona with literally half of the season now completed.

As routs go, this one is pretty comprehensive, with the factory team so far ahead of even the best Ducati privateers.

Even the half-exotic bimota Italian stallion is overmatched so far, with Lowes fourth overall on 132 points.

The next round is at Misano, Bulega and Ducati’s home turf, where hot temperatures will probably be in evidence again. And anybody betting against another Bulega triple there is potentially going to lose a bundle.

Fuel for thought

The much vaunted final drop in maximum fuel flow rates for the Ducati had little effect in Czechia last time out, but some riders felt a real change through the gear and onto the big back straight at Aragon.

Nicolo Bulega, who said he ran alone all day on Friday, with no other bike as a point of reference, explained that his bike is really now affected by the fuel flow drop.

“What I feel from my bike is that in the last part of RPM, my bike isn’t pushing. In every gear. In the last part of every gear, you feel there is no more power.”

New WorldSBK regular Tommy Bridewell explained that power is no longer the muzzled new Ducati’s main strong point. “I saw so many comments saying, ‘I bet you can’t wait for the back straight on the Ducati?’ But our fuel restriction is so heavy that I was behind Locatelli, in qualifying, in his slipstream and tucked right in… and I still could not pass him down that back straight. So I can categorically tell you we are not making our lap time in a straight line. The fact of it is that the bike just goes around the corner very fast. You can’t stop that as they have just made a phenomenal bike.”

It seems fuel flow is now having an effect, but it is increasingly looking like a balancing solution for a problem that does not exist anymore, now that super-tiny riders like Alvaro Bautista are not able to just blast past everyone down the straights.

Swapping to a conventional swingarm design, rather than having a single-sider, looks like the latest master stroke from Ducati.

Others also point out that the Ducati engine response, feel, and usability, especially on a low or transient throttle, is a great improvement on the 2026 bike compared to the previous version.

Remy Gardner

Fifteenth in Superpole, Remy was on course for a good points score in Race One until he was contacted and ran wide on the final lap. In the Sunday races by another rider, he was 13th then 12th. Overall, he is 17th at the halfway point of 2026. “It’s frustrating because our opening race was heavily compromised by another rider on the final lap. Overall, the pace was decent, and I felt competitive throughout. I was preparing to make a move and challenge for more positions in the closing stages, but after being forced wide at Turn 12, I lost several places and the opportunity to score points. It’s disappointing. Overall, Sunday was a better day and a decent way to finish the weekend.”

2026 WORLDSBK CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS AFTER ROUND 6