Bulega ready for the next challenge: at Jerez, just 40 thousandths off MotoGP pace on a Superbike

At Jerez, Nicolò Bulega did more than simply wrap up his Superbike season with yet another hat trick. In Sunday’s Superpole Race, he posted lap times virtually identical to those in MotoGP. The comparison is astonishing.

In Sunday’s midday sprint, the Ducati rider set the fastest lap in 1:37.196. At the end of April, in very similar conditions and with the temperature only slightly higher, Alex Marquez set the fastest lap in the MotoGP Sprint in 1:37.156. The difference between them was just 0.040 seconds.

The figures need to be seen in the context of an unprecedented season. At ten of the twelve rounds of the 2026 Superbike World Championship, Bulega won all three races, reaching the top step of the podium 32 times. The Panigale was the bike to beat, it’s true, but eight of his rivals were riding the same model.

The brand’s dominance was also clear in Saturday’s Race 1, with Ducati riders taking all of the top seven places. This had happened only twice before, in both races at Oschersleben in 2003, when Ducati riders also swept the top seven spots. Read our reports on the individual races in SBK Jerez: Superpole Race, same old story as Bulega never gives up and SBK Jerez: Bulega wins Race 2 and rides off into the distance as his rivals couldn’t wait for it to end.

With 52 wins, Bulega has drawn level with Troy Bayliss. No other one-time champion has won as many races, although the Australian competed when there were only two races per weekend. In 108 races, Bulega has claimed 92 podiums and 56 fastest laps. He ranks fifth all-time for wins, behind Jonathan Rea (119), Toprak Razgatlioglu (78), Alvaro Bautista (63) and Carl Fogarty (59).

His 32 wins in a single season erase Bautista’s record of 27, set in 2023. No one before him had strung together 47 consecutive podiums across two seasons, while his 36 podiums in a year and 726 championship points are also records. In the face of all these achievements, the Ducati rider said the world title remains the greatest prize, and that matching Bayliss is “very special” to him.

"I can’t pick one record; they all mean a lot to me, because an extraordinary amount of work goes into each one," Nicolò Bulega said. "Everything has been perfect. I’ve raced in the Superbike World Championship for only three years, and now I’m fifth on the all-time winners’ list. What more can I say? I’ve always had a fantastic bike and a great team, and every one of these wins with Ducati is special to me. An Italian rider on an Italian bike—fantastic!"

Not even a few raindrops in the closing stages of Race 2 unsettled him, though a downpour hit that part of Andalusia during the podium ceremony. Bulega described his final moments in the Superbike World Championship: "When you’re leading, you don’t know exactly how fast you can go. The rider in second has an advantage because he can see how much grip there is. I was praying the race would end like that; it was only after the chequered flag that the heavens opened."

And so Superbike bids farewell to its dominant force. Those 40 thousandths of a second over Alex Marquez remain the most eloquent calling card Bulega could have left at Jerez.

-> Follow us on Instagram too: @Corsedimoto