Dall’Igna hails Bulega and slams the crackdown on Ducati: “Limiting the winning bike is not the solution.”

Only two Italian riders have won the Superbike World Championship: Max Biaggi, in 2010 and 2012 with Aprilia, and now Nicolò Bulega with Ducati. Connecting the two eras is a single man, Gigi Dall’Igna. The engineer from Veneto celebrated with Max and yesterday in Cremona he did it again with Nicolò, present at the circuit along with other Borgo Panigale executives like Claudio Domenicali.

The title came with second place in Race 2, on a day when Iker Lecuona took the win. We recounted here the finale in SBK Cremona: The general manager of Ducati Corse did not hide his pride.

The numbers tell of a perfect season: 26 wins in 30 races. That’s why Dall’Igna didn’t want to let him slip away. The first move, fifteen months ago, was to pry him from BMW’s clutches, as they wanted him to replace Toprak Razgatlioglu. To beat the German competition Ducati made an extra effort, paying a salary of €700,000, compared to the €150,000 paid to Iker Lecuona. The plan was to have a winning piece on the Superbike board and to use Nicolò—an extremely sensitive rider and very experienced with Pirelli materials and working methods—in developing the Ducati 850 with the sole supplier’s 2007-spec tires. Promotion to MotoGP, where he will debut next year with Valentino Rossi’s team, was a given. The question now is: Will Nicolò Bulega be the first Superbike rider in history to achieve sustained success in the top class as well?

"He’s a rider who has grown tremendously," assures the Ducati Corse director. "In Superbike he learned a lot; he’s no longer the rider he was a few years ago."

This year we saw the best rider on the best bike on track, with the Panigale V4R clearly ahead of the competition. Credit goes to a deep evolution compared to 2025, as Dall’Igna himself explains. "We intervened quite heavily; we have a great working group and the results are clear." A team effort that goes beyond the racing department: "In the end, it’s a combination of the work from the racing department and from those who handle the road model. We’ve collaborated together from the start and we’ve done a great job."

Can the dominance continue? It’s a fair question, because the rule change coming into force in 2027 is drastic: rev limits and, at the same time, fuel flow limits—a measure that this season, however, did not curb the overwhelming Ducati. Dall’Igna would have preferred a different recipe: help those chasing instead of slowing down those who are winning.

"Limiting the winning bike, in my opinion, is not the best solution. I can’t write the rules, though; I can only offer suggestions and see what happens." The task facing Iker Lecuona and Franco Morbidelli, factory riders in 2027, could be tougher than what Bulega encountered. In the meantime, the new champion is preparing for the big leap to MotoGP.

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