Bulega doubles up with Pirelli SCX on Sunday at Donington

· Bulega strikes back with a double win. After his 25 consecutive wins streak was ended yesterday by team-mate Iker Lecuona, Nicolò Bulega (Ducati) bounced back in style in the two Sunday races of the UK Round, the eighth event of the FIM Superbike World Championship. After taking home the morning’s short race, the championship leader made a superb start from pole position in Race 2 and went on to claim his 23rd win of the season on a special day for Ducati, which arithmetically secured the Manufacturers’ Championship, after Aruba.it Racing – Ducati had already wrapped up the Teams’ Championship earlier in the day. Bulega finished ahead of Lecuona, who recovered brilliantly from tenth on the grid, while fellow Ducati rider Yari Montella completed the podium. As in Race 1 yesterday, every rider in Race 2 started out on Pirelli DIABLO™ Superbike supersoft SCX rear tyres, paired with the SC1 soft front.

·  Record-breaking SCX. Bulega won the Superpole Race Bulega ahead of Yari Montella and Sam Lowes’ Ducati bikes. All three opted for Pirelli SCX supersoft rear, on a grid evenly split between SCX (11 riders) and SCQ extrasoft (10 riders) tyres. The choice for the front unanimously settled for the SC1 soft standard tyre. On lap three, Lowes set a new race lap record with 1’25.124, improving Bulega’s yesterday time by three and a half tenths, and the previous record set by Toprak Razgatlıoğlu in 2024 by almost half a second.

· Twenty-four seconds faster. Today’s races saw a significant performance gain compared with 2025’s. Despite the initial ambient temperatures reaching 45°C – eight degrees higher than last year’s Race 2 – the race was almost 24 seconds faster overall, with an average improvement of one second per lap. The Superpole Race was also 6.7 seconds faster than in 2025, with a 0.673 second gain per lap.

·  An encore for Booth-Amos and Triumph. It was a standout weekend for Tom Booth-Amos, who followed yesterday’s comeback victory by winning also the WorldSSP Race 2. The Triumph rider converted his pole position into a win, ahead of Albert Arenas (Yamaha) and Jaume Masia (Ducati). Every rider on the grid chose SC1 soft front and SCX supersoft rear tyres. The WorldWCR Race 2 ended on a dramatic note: Maria Herrera crossed the line first – enough to secure the Women’s World Championship title – but received a six-second penalty for causing Paula Ramos to crash on the final lap. And so, the victory went to Beatriz Neila, ahead of Herrera and Roberta Ponziani, with the title fight postponed until the final round at Jerez de la Frontera. In the second race of the Yamaha R3 World Cup, American rider Christopher Clark double up for the weekend.

The new SCX supersoft confirms its strong performance
 
“The overall outcome at Donington Park is very positive in terms of performance and general tyre behaviour, with new records scored for qualifying, race pace and total race distance. Compared with last year’s event, the new 2026 rear tyres delivered a significant performance improvement, despite the unusually hot temperatures for this region.
While the new extrasoft SCQ tyre once again proved an excellent qualifying performance right from the start, as shown by Bulega’s Superpole lap record, the SCX supersoft allowed the leading WorldSBK riders to maintain a much faster pace than in the past, with very limited performance drop-off on a circuit traditionally characterised by high tyre wear.
Chosen as the reference tyre for long races and by most riders – including all podium finishers – in the Superpole Race, the new SCX took things a step forward, compared with the 2025 version, improving the lap record and overall race times. This was clearly shown by Race 2 lasting a whopping 24-second less, the equivalent of an average gain of one second per lap.
Another aspect worthy of mention is that this tyre is available on the market and may be purchased by all riders.
On an ending note, I would like to congratulate Ducati and the Aruba.it Racing team on securing the Manufacturers’ and Teams’ World Championships”.