SBK Balaton, Practice 2: Lecuona roars, the World Championship is the Ducati Cup

Has the dominator finally met his match? Among the twists of Balaton Park in Hungary, Iker Lecuona twice in a row put his head just ahead of Nicolò Bulega. The in-house duel adds weight to the showdown, but the Superbike World Championship looks more and more like the Ducati Cup: in FP2 there are even seven Panigale V4Rs ahead of everyone.

The two Ducati factory riders are running a championship of their own. All day they shadowed each other across the various sectors, constantly raising the bar. Bulega seemed in control, then at the last moment Lecuona snatched the day’s top spot from him. The pace is sky-high: the Spaniard clocked 1'38"860, smashing Toprak Razgatlioglu’s previous race record of 1'39"384. Nicolò conceded a tenth, a trifle: Race 1 will be hell, because even on a track that doesn’t suit him that much, the Italian won’t give way easily.

If he were still around here, who knows how Toprak Razgatlioglu would comment on this day. Last year, even while racking up wins with BMW, he often complained about Ducati’s superiority, which thanks to his talent was certainly not as overwhelming as it is now. This second session was an impressive show of force: the top three are the same as the three podiums from the previous Assen round, with Sam Lowes once again highly incisive. This time Baldassarri, Surra, Montella and Bautista joined the carousel. The magnificent seven are a mixed bunch: there’s a three-time World Champion (Bautista) as well as two rookies like Baldassarri and Surra. With the Panigale, you fly, in any case.

Here, last summer, the Germans swept the board with Toprak Razgatlioglu, but things in racing change fast. Now the potential of the M1000RR seems to have vanished, with Miguel Oliveira only ninth, eight tenths back, even behind Sam Lowes’ Bimota. It went even worse for Danilo Petrucci on the other BMW, who went down due to a shifting problem. If BMW isn’t smiling, the Japanese are even less so: Kawasaki fell back into line after Garrett Gerloff’s chest-out morning. Yamaha looked to have made a small step forward in the Netherlands; here it has sunk again. Honda brings up the rear with ex-MotoGP rider Somkiat Chantra over two seconds off. Not good.

Nicolò Bulega is on a thirteen-race winning streak: the last four of last season (one at Estoril, three at the Jerez finale) and he’s unbeaten in the first nine contests of 2026. At this pace he has matched Toprak Razgatlioglu’s record for consecutive wins. If he wins two more here at Balaton, he would catch Alvaro Bautista, who strung together eleven in a row at the start of 2019, only to hand the World Championship to Jonathan Rea at the end of that strange season. Bulega’s streak is now threatened by the surge of Iker Lecuona: first showdown Saturday at 15:30. Will the top dog keep his unbeaten run alive?

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