World Championship question: Is Nicolò Bulega without rivals in this Superbike season?

Superbike is about to land in Europe shrouded in a Hamlet-like doubt: with Toprak Razgatlioglu moving up to MotoGP, will Ducati rider Nicolò Bulega find any rivals capable of spicing up the ’26 World Championship?

The crushing hat-trick at Phillip Island isn’t compelling evidence. On Victoria’s rollercoaster, Bulegass had triumphed in his debut race in the top class of production-derived bikes just two years ago. In 2025 he swept the board, exactly as happened twelve months later. From a timing standpoint, the only extractable data to compare the two feats is from the Superpole Race, run over the same distance and in similar conditions. This time around Bulega completed the distance two seconds quicker. The two long races aren’t comparable, because in 2025 Race 1 was held in the dry but over a shorter distance (20 laps instead of 22) and with a mandatory pit stop. Last month Race 2 was run in the wet, with Bulega even more dominant than in the dry. Over three years (nine races) at Phillip Island, Nicolò has won seven times.

In 2025 Bulega left Australia with double the points of second-placed Alvaro Bautista: 62 to 36. The standings then featured two privateers, Iannone with 35 points and Petrucci with 31, while Toprak Razgatlioglu at Phillip Island had banked only the 20 points for second place in Race 1. This time the Ducati rider heads out with a smaller lead: Axel Bassani is second with 42 points, followed by Yari Montella with 26. Further back, the two new BMW standard-bearers are more or less in the same chasing position as Toprak last year: Miguel Oliveira has 17 points, one more than Danilo Petrucci. After just one round (out of twelve) the German armada is already 45 points off the lead. Beyond the scores, it’s important to underline the difference in stature between the previous rival and the current ones. Toprak, even when trailing, inspired fear thanks to his track record and competitiveness, which in fact burst back to life forcefully from the very next round at Portimão. Right now behind Bulega are two riders, Bassani and Montella, who have never won a World Championship race.

So Australia raised the doubt that the ’26 Championship might be a foregone conclusion, but there’s no certainty yet. Because Phillip Island is Bulega’s and the Panigale V4 R’s backyard, even (and perhaps more so…) in this new version with the double-sided swingarm. At the same time, it’s also, historically, the least suitable track for BMW. There, even with the same M1000RR, Toprak has always taken a beating, so the troublesome weekend for newcomers Oliveira and Petrucci didn’t cause excessive concern. The real exam will be Portimão…

The second World Championship weekend will be the trial by fire not only for BMW’s ambitions, but for the fate of this Championship. Oliveira will be racing at home with enormous pressure on his shoulders: on the Portuguese rollercoaster, his predecessor Toprak Razgatlioglu a year ago scored a treble, beating Nicolò Bulega in three sprint finishes. It will be difficult for Miguel to replicate that result, also because in 2025 the Ducati rider’s combined deficit over three races was just 2.070 seconds: in other words, he put up a huge fight. More than the finishing positions, the performance will tell the story: do the two BMW riders already have, at this early stage of apprenticeship with the new bike (and for Oliveira, coming from MotoGP, with tires and the championship as well) the potential to withstand the onslaught of a rider who threatens to make a clean sweep of this season? After Portimão, it could already be too late.