Nicolo Bulega has met his match: “The battle was just like with Toprak”

No winning streak lasts forever. In 2019, Alvaro Bautista won eleven consecutive races in the Superbike World Championship, setting a new record. In 2024, Toprak Razgatlioglu extended the record to 13 and repeated this feat last year. From 12 October 2025, Nicolo Bulega remained unbeaten for 25 consecutive races, until Race 1 at Donington Park on 11 July 2026, when his Aruba-Ducati team-mate Iker Lecuona stole the show.

To put these fantastic figures into perspective: the MotoGP record is held by Marc Marquez, with ten consecutive GP wins in the 2014 season. Last year, the Spaniard even won 14 times in a row, although this figure included both sprint and GP victories, as is customary in Superbike racing.

Bulega can take something positive from the defeat

“Second is okay, it’s a good result,” said Bulega of his first defeat of the season. “Obviously, first would have been better. But sometimes coming second isn’t the end of the world. If I can keep winning, then I’ll be a bit happier. But that’s fine; I gave it 100 per cent. Overtaking Iker was very difficult because he had better acceleration coming out of the last two hairpin bends in the first two gears. I’m delighted for Iker and his team on this win; they deserve it. They did a better job – I’ll try to find a solution for Sunday. Nothing has changed for me: when I go out on the track, I try to finish first; I managed that 25 times in a row. The fact that I’ve now finished second isn’t a big deal. I actually think it’s good for me. When you win a lot, you start to think that’s the limit. But now I’ve realised that we need to improve in certain areas.”

For the first time this year, we saw a battle at the front right up to the chequered flag, though Lecuona and Bulega were, as always, well ahead of the rest of the field: third-placed Yari Montella (Barni Spark Ducati) was already 6.7 seconds behind.

“I really enjoyed the battle,” Bulega smiled during a small press conference. “Finally, a race where I wasn’t riding alone. It was just like my battles with Toprak last year. There were some good overtaking manoeuvres, sometimes a bit on the limit. That was because I always had to make up three or four bike lengths under braking. In situations like that, it’s difficult to pull off a clean manoeuvre because the distances are hard to control at high speed.”

There were no team orders, as the championship leader confirmed: “We’re both sensible and know we shouldn’t do anything stupid. But of course, sometimes things can happen – that’s just the nature of racing. So far, we’ve always raced hard but clean against each other, which is good.”