2026 is officially underway and Aruba.it Racing – Ducati got the 39^th MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship season rolling in style. Despite an abridged preseason of testing due to poor weather, Iker Lecuona (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) set a promising base in what was his first weekend with the team at Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit’s Australian Round.

PODIUM PACE: “I had the pace to have put me on the podium, but I didn’t have the track position to catch up in time”

Lecuona had an ignominious start in the first event of his first round with his new team; he slipped down to P13 in Tissot Superpole, just over a second off of his teammate Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) in P1. Furthermore, Ducati riders like Yari Montella (Barni Spark Racing Team) and Lorenzo Baldassarri (Team GoEleven) impressed with their P2 and P7 performances, seven tenths and 0.183s quicker than #7 respectively. He fought his way back up the grid on Saturday in Race 1 to take P6, but the real heavy lifting was yet to come.

 In Sunday morning’s Tissot Superpole Race, Lecuona was shuffled aside by an incisive Andrea Locatelli (Pata Maxus Yamaha) move down the inside of Turn 1, who was followed in by Remy Gardner (GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team); forcing Lecuona to pick up the bike and run wide, having to confront the race from the very back of the grid by the entrance of Turn 2 on the opening lap. He recovered to P16 by the end of Lap 1 and regained his P13 grid start by Lap 5. He got to work from Lap 6 onwards, maintaining a 1’29s pace for the rest of the race, including finding more than half a second from his 1’29.813s Lap 6 to his 1’29.272s Lap 7, and his personal best of the race set in Lap 9 of 1’29.177. His pace helped him climb back up the order as well, improving by one position across laps eight and nine, before overtaking both Tarran Mackenzie (MGM Optical Express Racing) and Danilo Petrucci (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) in the final lap to take P9.

On his Tissot Superpole Race recovery, Lecuona said: “I had an ok start in the Superpole Race, but in the first corner, a Yamaha bike arrived too fast, so I had to pick up the bike, and it sent me off-track. I didn’t see who it was; I only saw that it was a blue bike. That put me back into last place going into T2, so I was just trying to get into P9 to score. I had pace to have put me on the podium, but I didn’t have the track position to catch up in time. I finished in P9 by the end. I even overtook two riders on the last lap to get into P9. We were on the limit, but we found a way to finish in P9.”

GROWING PAINS: “I had a lot of moments where I almost fell during the race. I felt like I had zero feeling with the rear tyre”

Later that afternoon on Sunday, the WorldSBK field returned to the grid for their final race Down Under. While the preseason tests weren’t as productive for anyone as the teams had hoped, if there was one thing that it had in spades, it was wet-weather time on track, but it went largely underutilised. As a result, Lecuona was frustrated by his lack of feeling with the setup in the Race 2 deluge. He started the race from P9; however, fell back early by two places to end Lap 1 in P11. He bided his time until Lap 6, when he overtook Garrett Gerloff (Kawasaki WorldSBK Team) and put him behind Danilo Petrucci. He did well to hold off the BMW pair for the subsequent 13 Laps, gaining positions as riders like Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team) crashed out. In the end, in the penultimate laps, he lost positions to ‘Petrux’ and his teammate Miguel Oliveira, yet he was able to take P8, riding back into a dry garage with points from all three of the weekend’s races in his pocket.

On his Race 2 and reflecting on his debut weekend with Ducati on the whole, Lecuona said: “Honestly, I’m a bit frustrated about Race 2. I had a battle with Danilo and Miguel during the race. I held the position the whole race despite having a bad feeling with the bike from the start. It was very difficult to ride; I had a lot of moments where I almost fell during the race. I felt like I had zero feeling with the rear tyre, and a track like this, where you need to have a good feeling with the tyres, it was even harder in the wet. That bad feeling with the bike was frustrating, but the team is happy, so I need to be as well. We made good progress across the whole week. This is the first time in four years that I finished in Australia without crashing, so that’s a very positive thing. We had the speed; we need to put all the pieces together to find that last tenth, but we did a really good job. I’d say out of ten, I’d rate my weekend 7.5/10.”

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