Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) simply refused to slow down at the Tissot Estoril Round, crushing the field for a stunning three-win sweep that rewrote the record books. With the championship already secured, the Italian machine laid waste to previous benchmarks, lifting his single-season race win record to 29 victories and establishing a new high for hat-tricks with 12 WorldSBK triples.
That ruthless pace was obvious from the very first session. The #11 dominated Friday Free Practices before pulling off an emphatic circuit record-setting 1’33.884s lap to grab his 10th pole position, leaving his teammate over eight tenths clear in second. Saturday’s Race 1 brought more of the same masterclass. Despite dropping to third initially behind his teammate and Alex Lowes (bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team), Bulega clawed his way back to the lead by Lap 3 with a blistering 1’34.964s fastest lap, dominating every sector bar the first to take his 47th career win and hand Ducati their 480th in the class.
It’s fantastic, it’s not that I don’t care about records; I do care,
Sunday morning's Tissot Superpole Race offered a brief early fight before Bulega took complete control. His teammate again grabbed the holeshot, leading by 0.113s after the opening lap and holding on through a tense second lap. But a mistake on the brakes into Turn 1 on Lap 3 let the #11 strike. Dropping a record-shattering 1’34.525s lap on the fourth tour, Bulega stretched his margin to over 1.8 seconds, eventually cruising across the line seven tenths ahead of the 2026 Champion.
History beckoned again in the afternoon. Though his teammate snatched the lead at the opening corner for the third time, Bulega executed a swift counter-attack at Turn 6 on the opening lap and never looked back. He steadily nursed a half-second gap by Lap 4, held a stable advantage through the middle phase, and then dropped the hammer over the second half to win by nearly five seconds.
Reflecting on a flawless weekend, Bulega admitted: “An amazing Sunday and an amazing weekend overall, maybe even one of the best of the season because of how good my feeling with the bike was.” He added, “My pace on Sunday in Race 2 was incredible, it was very, very fast. Iker was close to me at the beginning of the race, but then I continued to push and my pace over the second half of the race was a bit better.”
The victory parade also meant historic casualties in the record books. The 25 points collected on Sunday afternoon pushed Bulega to 664 points for the season, officially eclipsing Jonathan Rea's legendary 2019 benchmark of 663 points. With just three races remaining at Jerez, Bulega stands on the cusp of matching Rea's record of 34 podiums in a single season.
Though he often plays down the statistics, the champion let his guard down on Sunday afternoon. “It’s fantastic, it’s not that I don’t care about records; I do care,” Bulega confessed. “It makes me really proud to achieve records and see my name on top of these lists; at the end of the day however, to me winning races is more important. I’m already thinking about Jerez and if I can raise the records even higher.”
