A MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship trophy earned last round looks to have done little to dull Nicolo Bulega's (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) insatiable appetite for silverware as he ran roughshod over the field at the Tissot Estoril Round. His teammate Iker Lecuona prevented ‘Bulegas’ from standing on the top step of the rostrum across all three of his home races at Cremona, but now with the title in hand and the pressure lifted from his shoulders, Bulega took the single-season race win record from his former teammate Alvaro Bautista (Barni Spark Racing Team). The #11 raised it to 29 wins with three races remaining at Jerez as he set the record for most hat tricks with 12 WorldSBK triples
BACK ON TOP OF THE ORDER
The #11 topped both Friday Free Practices and earned his 10th pole position start with an emphatic circuit record-setting 1’33.884s to outpace his teammate in P2 by more than eight tenths. Saturday’s Race 1 was spic and span from the #11. He recovered the race lead with the event’s fastest lap time of 1’34.964 on Lap 3 after falling as far as third, behind Lecuona and Alex Lowes (bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team). He set fastest times through all sectors but the first, where he was less than a tenth off from the #7.
“AN AMAZING SUNDAY AND AN AMAZING WEEKEND OVERALL, MAYBE EVEN ONE OF THE BEST OF THE SEASON”
In a blustery Sunday morning Tissot Superpole Race, the Italian saw his teammate once again enjoy a better jump off the line, leading by 0.113s after the opening lap. The Spaniard then narrowly extended his lead by a matter of thousandths over Lap 2, but after a big moment on the brakes into Turn 1 of Lap 3, Bulega again struck to take back the lead. A subsequent race lap record-setting 1’34.525s lap on Lap 4 carved out a margin of over 1.8 seconds on the #7, and while Lecuona would narrow that gap to cross the finish line just seven tenths behind the 2026 Champion, Bulega made it two for two at Estoril on Sunday morning.
For the third and final time of the weekend, Lecuona again took the lead from the #11 on the run into the opening corner. Bulega got his revenge for later that lap at Turn 6, and left the rest of the pack in the dust from that point on. He opened Lap 2 with a two-tenth gap and took a tenth each lap over the next two laps to nurse a gap of nearly half a second by Lap 4. His margin stagnated at around a second and a half from Lap 9 to Lap 11, but he put the hammer down over the second half of the race to cross the line just shy of five seconds before his teammate.
On his three-win weekend, Bulega said: “I’m really happy. An amazing Sunday and an amazing weekend overall, maybe even one of the best of the season because of how good my feeling with the bike was. My pace on Sunday in Race 2 was incredible, it was very, very fast. Iker was close to me at the beginning of the race, but then I continued to push and my pace over the second half of the race was a bit better. I managed the tyre a bit better, so I’m really happy about my performance and what my team was able to do because they improved the bike a lot.”
“IT MAKES ME REALLY PROUD TO ACHIEVE RECORDS AND SEE MY NAME ON TOP … I’M ALREADY THINKING ABOUT JEREZ”
Having locked down all three titles in 2026, Bulega continues to swing for the fences in 2026 as he hunts down what few records he hasn’t stamped his, and his manufacturers’ name atop already. His Race 1 win saw him land his 47th career win in the class, the 480th for Ducati. With P1 in Race 2, he closed to within one rostrum result of tying Jonathan Rea's record-holding 34-podium 2019 season; yet the Ulsterman did see his name replaced atop another record tally on Sunday afternoon, as with the 25 points from P1, Bulega passed Rea’s record 663-point 2019 season. The Italian currently holds 664 after Estoril with three races still left to ride.
While he typically downplays the significance of these accolades to the media, Bulega got candid on Sunday afternoon; he said: “It’s fantastic, it’s not that I don’t care about records; I do care. It makes me really proud to achieve records and see my name on top of these lists; at the end of the day however, to me winning races is more important. I’m already thinking about Jerez and if I can raise the records even higher.“
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