Superbike Balaton: Can Bulega win them all? Lecuona bows out in Game 2

At this point the only option would be to make him start in the middle of the pack, maybe with one arm tied behind his back. Nicolò Bulega right now in Superbike has no rival. Even in Hungary, for the fifth time in a row (including Jerez ’25), he took everything: a triple and new lap records.

Iker Lecuona hoped that starting alongside him he’d be able to fight it out. But not even on the Balaton Park rollercoaster, where last year he put the Honda on the podium, could the Spaniard do anything about it. For half the distance he stayed fairly close, under a second. But Bulega is not only lightning fast, he’s also a champion who can perfectly manage his enormous potential. Tyres, bike, physical effort: everything under control, like true superstars. Could Nicolò win them all? It sounds far-fetched, but it could really happen.

Nicolò is racing into Superbike history: sixteen wins in a row (31 in his career), and he’s just broken the record of 24 consecutive podiums set by Jonathan Rea in Kawasaki’s spectacular 2018–19 biennium. But there’s one stat that impresses more than any other: since the opening round in Australia, Bulega has led 206 of the 216 total laps. An unreachable, relentless hammer: a perfect rider, who would be more than ready to take on the dragons of MotoGP, where he’d find far tougher opponents than these.

The 2026 Superbike looks just like last year’s. Bulega was up against Toprak Razgatlioglu, and the pair ran a championship of their own. This year, without the Turk, the Italian has found a bit of in-house competition, but the others are miles away. Yari Montella brought home another podium with the Barni Ducati: for a privateer, trailing by twelve seconds is acceptable; he’s not the one who can challenge the supremacy. Baldassarri wrapped up the weekend with a fourth place, while Garrett Gerloff, who finished behind on the Kawasaki, was the only non-Ducati rider in the top eight.

In this round the (hypothetical) challengers to the Red went completely adrift. The BMWs didn’t even start, due to the Superpole Race injuries of Miguel Oliveira and Danilo Petrucci. Yamaha lost its only current spearhead, Andrea Locatelli, after a fall in the early stages of the race. This time the Bimotas also misfired, the only brand that had somehow withstood the impact in this first part of the season. Axel Bassani retired with a mechanical issue, Alex Lowes crashed out. And Honda? With Chantra still recovering and Kunii a bewildered stand-in for the long-term absentee Dixon, the CBR-RR sadly anchored itself to the bottom of the standings.

The Superbike World Championship has filed away the first quarter of the season and faces a series of back-to-back commitments. In two weeks it stays in Europe, moving to Most in the Czech Republic. A faster track than Balaton Park, but quite peculiar. Nicolò Bulega has shown he’s blisteringly quick in all conditions and on every type of circuit. For his rivals, it will still be incredibly tough.

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