SBK Misano Practice 1: Bulega takes the lead on the 'cursed' track, Ducati shows no limits

Ducati has swept everything in the previous six rounds—how could you imagine anything changing right here at Misano, the home track and traditional hunting ground of the Red machine? The opening practice sessions were a Red show.

Leading the pack of Panigale V4 Rs is, of course, him again: Nicolò Bulega. We’re talking about the cannibal who has won 22 races in a row and naturally dominates an ever-fattening championship lead. His first strike is a 1'32"733, just a whisker off the race lap record of 1'32"687 set two years ago by Toprak Razgatlioglu on the BMW. The outright benchmark is 1'31"618, last year’s Superpole time, set by Bulega himself.

It’s incredible to think that Nicolò has never won here at Misano in Superbike, one of the tracks where he took his first steps. He debuted in 2024, so he has just six top-class races at the World Circuit under his belt: five second places behind a Toprak Razgatlioglu who genuinely worked wonders here for two years running. The only zero, in last year’s Superpole Race, came from an Axel Bassani gamble at Turn 1 that cost both of them precious points. Especially Nicolò who, let’s not forget, lost the ’25 title by just eleven points. The short race win awards twelve.

In this first session there are six Ducatis topping the timesheets, with Iker Lecuona very close to the team leader, just 56 thousandths back. The satellite riders follow: Sam Lowes, Yari Montella, Alberto Surra, and Lorenzo Baldassarri. As if to say: give me a Ducati, then leave it to me. The best of the rest is Xavi Vierge on the Yamaha: teams did two days of testing here last month, which seem to have helped solve the issues that have plagued the YZF-R1 since the start of the season. Not a sparkling start for Bimota, with Bassani eighth and nearly a second off. No chance for BMW, which has the returning Miguel Oliveira still not at full strength (17th time) and must once again do without Danilo Petrucci, replaced again by the Dutchman Michael van der Mark (15th). Honda HRC didn’t show up—unfortunately, that’s nothing new.

Ducati is dominating this year’s Superbike World Championship thanks to a technical commitment of enormous quality and depth. The Racing Department is fully invested in the project, as shown by the presence of the entire “high command” in the Aruba box at Misano. In the photo, from the left in the image below: Davide Barana, technical director of the racing department. In the middle: Marco Zambenedetti, Superbike project coordinator, the highest-ranking engineer present at all rounds of the championship. On the right, the big boss Luigi Dall’Igna, the head of Ducati Corse. This weekend, on the track closest to Borgo Panigale, the two factory riders, Nicolò Bulega and Iker Lecuna, will have more technical potential than ever.

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