With two more drenched days of 2026 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship preseason testing in the books, while certainly each team still has their set of unknowns pertaining to their bike, Iker Lecuona (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) has been keeping the hammer down in testing. Factors like rainy weather have severely limited dry running time across Jerez and Portimao, but so far, Lecuona and his crew have been controlling what they can and knocking items off their to-do list.

OVERCOMING TOUGH CONDITIONS: “I'm quite happy with the job; in the end, it was very tricky overall, but we needed to ride”

Lecuona only took to the track on Day 2 at Portimao as overnight rain and strong winds kept all but four WorldSBK riders off-track and in the boxes. Considering riders have a limited number of test days, few will fault them however, in the case of Lecuona and others, it is also true that now only two more days of testing remain before the season kicks off, mandating that Lecuona and his new crew chief, Andrea Oleari, will need to build their chemistry quickly.

On his Day 2 progress, Lecuona said: “It was fine, I'm quite happy with the job, in the end it was very tricky overall, but we needed to ride. My crew chief and I are both new, so it was all new for both of us. We're happy, we learned a lot about how to work with each other, with the bike, the electronics, everything. The target was to run some laps and to be ready for Australia. I think we did our job well today. We didn't work in one area; some on the base, some on the electronics. We found a better base when we have low grip. I feel really happy because we hit our target of working in low-grip environments.”

SLIP & SLIDE: “I crashed on Turn 8, very low speed, tricky conditions, but I'm happy to have crashed because it helps me know the limit on the front”

One of Lecuona’s recurring issues during his four years with Honda was his tendency to overextend his Honda CBR1000RR-R, leading to crashes and other mistakes. Now with the 2026 Ducati Panigale V4 R underneath him, he’ll hope to put those issues behind him, but as with any new bike with limited testing time and wet weather, there are always bound to be growing pains.

On his afternoon trip to the gravel, Lecuona said: “I crashed on Turn 8, very low speed, tricky conditions, but I'm happy to have crashed because it helps me know the limit on the front. In Australia, we don't have enough laps on the bike yet, so the target is the same: to just run some laps, do my job, but nothing crazy on the bike. let’s see after the test if we're more or less ready for the race.”

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