Michelin vs Pirelli: Bulega analyzes his debut and looks ahead to 2026

Bulega took stock of his MotoGP debut weekend: in Portimao he got a first real taste.

In the 2025 Portuguese Grand Prix there were several talking points, and one of the main ones was Nicolò Bulega’s debut in MotoGP. He already knew the Grand Prix paddock thanks to his years in Moto3 and Moto2, but he had never raced in the top class. Marc Marquez’s injury gave him this opportunity and, after a short test at Jerez with the Desmosedici GP25, he decided to join the Ducati Lenovo team for the final grands prix at Portimao and Valencia.

After crashing on lap four of the sprint race, the Superbike rider was eager to make it to the checkered flag in the long race. Perhaps the fear of making another mistake led him to ride more cautiously and not show his full potential. In any case, he finished fifteenth and scored his first point in MotoGP. Only 451 thousandths separated him from Miguel Oliveira, a much more experienced colleague and home hero at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve. Less than 2 seconds ahead was another rider who doesn’t lack experience, namely Alex Rins. Not bad at all.

Interviewed by Sky Sport MotoGP, Bulega said he was fairly satisfied with his first weekend in the premier class, even though he would have liked to log more laps: “My main goal was to finish the race, because I needed to ride. Unfortunately, this weekend I wasn’t able to put everything together. Sadly, on Saturday morning in FP2 the track was half wet and I didn’t go out, I came into Q1 with few laps under my belt and I also made a mistake. I struggled to piece everything together. In the sprint I crashed after a few laps, so I didn’t ride there either. I messed up a little...”.

The rider from Emilia confirms that, mindful of what happened in the sprint race, he started the long race without pushing to the maximum: “At the start I struggled a lot — he admits — because I still didn’t trust it. On Saturday I lost a bit of confidence, having crashed upright as soon as I touched the brake. In the race I set off very calmly, I wanted to warm up the front and understand a bit more all the time. In the end I wasn’t going badly; on the penultimate lap I did a 39.3, a decent time. I made up the 3–4 seconds I’d lost mid-race due to a mistake, I caught the guys ahead: Oliveira, Rins, and Miller were there. It’s a pity about that mistake, otherwise I could have finished a bit further up. Anyway, the final position didn’t matter that much to me, I just wanted to finish the race.”

Bulega confirmed that the most complicated aspect to grasp in MotoGP concerns the Michelin tires; coming from World Superbike and Pirelli, adapting wasn’t easy: “The thing I’m struggling with the most isn’t the bike, it’s the tires. They’re very different from what we use in Superbike. If in SBK you need to do one thing, in MotoGP you have to do another. I did the whole race telling myself not to brake and not to open the gas decisively like in Superbike. The bike is difficult, but it’s still a bike. Next year I’ll be curious to try it with Pirellis, tires I get along with very well. The data shows there are points where I’m competitive even with the Michelins; the problem is putting it all together. In some sections I trust it and in others I don’t; I haven’t fully figured out the limit yet.”

In 2026 the rider from Emilia will continue in WorldSBK with the Aruba.it Racing Ducati team, but he will also be a Ducati MotoGP test rider and will have the chance to ride the Desmosedici fitted with Pirelli-branded tires, which in 2027 will become the new sole supplier for the top class.