The MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship arrives at the Circuito Estoril for the penultimate round of the campaign, and the numbers heading into this weekend are simply wild. We are looking at a masterclass of a season that is rewriting the record books, and the statistics tell a story of sheer dominance.
Let us start with the unstoppable Nicolò Bulega. He could head to MotoGP tied with Troy Bayliss on fifty-two WorldSBK wins, which would land him fifth on the all-time list—though he needs to win all three races at Estoril and Jerez to make it happen. Bulega sits on an insane podium streak of forty-three, the best in WorldSBK history, leaving his nearest rivals Colin Edwards and Toprak Razgatlioglu in the dust at twenty-five in 2002 and 2025, respectively. His points streak is also forty-three races long, trailing only a forty-eight race sequence by Jonathan Rea from Laguna Seca 2018 to Lusail 2019.
The records do not stop there for the 2026 Champion. Bulega has already taken twenty-six wins this year, giving him the second-best season ever, leaving him just one shy of the all-time record of twenty-seven set by Alvaro Bautista in 2023. Furthermore, Bulega has led every single lap in seventeen races this season, an all-time record data tracking has seen since 1998, comfortably beating Bautista's eleven from 2019. He has also recorded sixteen Grand Slams this year—winning from pole, leading every lap, and setting the fastest race lap—and equalled Toprak Razgatlioglu's all-time record of eleven hat-tricks at Magny-Cours.
Ducati as a manufacturer are tearing through the statistics with equal fury. They are just one win short of equalling their own all-time streak of thirty-five wins set from Valencia Race 1, 2003 to Silverstone Race 1, 2004. At Cremona, Ducati became the first manufacturer with thirty wins in a single season, beating their own 2023 total of twenty-eight. They are also sitting on a streak of twenty consecutive podium lockouts and thirty-five fastest race laps. Most remarkably, Ducati locked the top four spots at the finish in all of the last six races run, an unprecedented streak where no manufacturer had previously managed more than three straight.
The intensity of the battle at the front is further highlighted by the duel between Bulega and Iker Lecuona, who have claimed every single race win this season while conceding only four second places to their rivals: two to Yari Montella and two to Axel Bassani. Yet, despite all this red machinery supremacy, Ducati are somehow still yet to record a pole position at Estoril in their history, having qualified second four times across 1993, 2021, 2024, and 2025.
Estoril itself has a history of tight racing and varied winners, with ten different winners out of nineteen races run. Among them, Toprak Razgatlioglu stands out as the only rider to climb onto the podium for BMW here, going six for six with four wins, alongside holding the record of three pole positions at the venue. And if you need reminding of how razor-thin the margins can get here, look back to 2024, when Bulega beat Razgatlioglu by a stunning 0.003s in the Tissot Superpole Race—the closest ever finish in WorldSBK history.
