After a stellar 2025 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship season where he landed a second-place finish, Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) earned the opportunity to compete in MotoGP’s final two rounds of the 2025 season. His debut came at the Portuguese GP at Portimao, a track where he has plenty of WorldSBK experience.

The opportunity came about after a hard crash at the Indonesian Round saw the #93 Champion-to-be Marc Marquez tumble into the gravel after a collision with Marco Bezzecchi. Marquez was later diagnosed with a shoulder injury, which, while he had already clinched the 2025 World Championship to place a seventh title in his MotoGP trophy cabinet, meant that he would celebrate from the garage as he was ruled unfit for the season’s three remaining rounds. MotoGP Ducati Test rider Michele Pirro replaced the #93 at the subsequent Australian GP, but Bulega was given the keys to the World Champion’s bike for the final rounds of the season.

BAPTISM BY FIRE: Having been limited to 30 just 30 laps of testing time on the MotoGP bike, Bulega turned heads on the first day of his debut Grand Prix

Bulega made a statement on Friday morning at Portimao. In his MotoGP Free Practice, the #11 landed P14, just three tenths of a second off of top-ten pace and less than a second behind Alex Marquez in P1. Later in the day, ‘Bulegas’ couldn’t quite replicate the pace in the Practice session.

Saturday morning’s Q1 session showed more glimpses of greatness from Bulega. He sat in P3 for much of the first half of the session, more than a half a second above the rest of the pack behind him. He was even on pace to take pole on a flying lap with less than two minutes left to go before he ran wide in the third sector, effectively ending his run as he later didn’t have time to improve his time and settled for a sixth-row start from P18. In the Tissot Sprint, Bulega saw his first race end early as he took a spill on Turn 13 of the race’s fourth lap. While he would have enjoyed more time on track, he was sporting a smile in the press area on Saturday afternoon.

GROWING PAINS: “In World Superbike, you can be very aggressive braking on the entry, and in MotoGP, you can’t; you have to be smooth… I just need more experience”

On his Saturday afternoon crash, Bulega said: “It was my first laps with the hard front tyre. In the first laps, I was just trying to understand how this tyre works. I overtook some riders and was pushing to try to overtake Morbidelli, but I braked too hard and lost the front. The braking is very hard for me now to adjust to; the braking style in MotoGP is the complete opposite of WorldSBK. In World Superbike, you can be very aggressive braking on the entry, and in MotoGP, you can’t; you have to be smooth on the first part of the corner. It’s normal, I think, I just need to learn as I get more experience.”

EARNING HIS STRIPES: “In the end, the last 6-7 laps were quite fast, not too bad, I was catching the guys in front of me”

Sunday’s Grand Prix featured a more measured approach from Bulega, prioritising his coming to grips with the bike over his flat-out speed. He finished the race in the points, placing P15 for his first MotoGP point. Despite that result, late in the race, Bulega showed more glimpses of his calibre as a rider. For stretches, he was consistently lapping in the high 1’39s, on pace with Pol Espargaro in P10 and faster than Jack Miller, Alex Rins and Miguel Oliveira ahead of him.

On his Sunday in the Portimao Grand Prix, Bulega said: “Sunday was a better day. I made an inexperienced mistake yesterday and only got to do three laps, but I knew I needed to stay on the bike longer. So today, my goal was to finish the race and gain more experience, getting to know some things on the bike that are still new to me. In the end, the last 6-7 laps were quite fast, not too bad. I was catching the guys in front of me, but unfortunately, I made a mistake and I lost three or four seconds. I recovered and caught them again, but the race finished. It was important to get this extra experience for the next round in Valencia.”

Bulega’s teammate for the rest of the season and full-time Ducati factory MotoGP rider Pecco Bagnaia chimed in on how he saw his rookie teammate. He said: “He didn’t need too much advice, he was strong from the start. He was unlucky to crash on Saturday and maybe that made him lose a bit of confidence, but to finish your first race in the points is a good result, so he can be very happy, and in Valencia he can make another step.”

Catch Bulega’s best moments from 2024 and 2025 with the WorldSBK VideoPass!