Nicolò Bulega after setting Friday’s fastest time: “Nobody will be watching the races”

The summer break in the 2026 Superbike World Championship is over, but the balance of power has shifted. Ducati dominated proceedings on the first day of practice at Magny-Cours, particularly with Nicolò Bulega. The Aruba.it works rider and 23-time race winner this season (out of 24 races) set the day’s fastest time of 1:35.556 in FP1 this morning and was also the fastest in FP2 this afternoon with a time of 1:35.916.

Only a few riders were faster on that hot afternoon. Bulega tops the combined timesheet by 0.284 seconds and 0.433 seconds ahead of his team-mates Sam Lowes and Iker Lecuona – and yet it wasn’t a perfect day!

“I don’t have the best feel for my bike; I’m actually having to fight quite hard,” said the 26-year-old late in the afternoon during a small press briefing at the Circuit de Nevers. “It’s exhausting to ride the bike here. I prefer it when I can ride it more smoothly and technically. The chicanes in particular are giving me trouble, so we need to adapt the set-up even better for Magny-Cours. I’ll probably have to work on my line choice too, for example when braking into Turn 4. I hope we can make some improvements for Saturday.”

Nicolo Bulega: Title celebrations as early as Magny-Cours? I’d prefer Cremona!

Mathematically speaking, Bulega could become World Champion as early as Magny-Cours, but this scenario is unlikely. The Superbike high-flyer would need to score 53 more points than his team-mate and championship runner-up Iker Lecuona, which means the Spaniard would have to come away with almost nothing from the three races, even if he scored the maximum possible 62 points.

Bulega would much prefer it if the title celebrations took place at his home race in Cremona from 25 to 27 September anyway. After all, Formula 1 at Monza is the main attraction for his compatriots this weekend.

“Probably nobody will be watching our race. Perhaps it would be a good idea to hold both motorbike and car races as part of the same event. That would be something,” joked the Italian. “But Cremona was a strong weekend for me last year, also in terms of the crowds. I won all three races! The car parks were a bit of a problem, but they’ll probably have that better under control this year.”

For your information: due to Formula 1, the start of the first Superbike race on Saturday has been scheduled for 3.30 pm. The second main race on Sunday will take place at 2 pm as usual.