Lecuona ends Bulega’s winning streak with Pirelli

· Lecuona’s maiden victory. After a season so far dominated by Nicolò Bulega, Donington Park marked the breakthrough for Iker Lecuona, who secured his maiden victory in the FIM Superbike World Championship, after an enthralling head-to-head with his Ducati teammate. Making an excellent start from second on the grid, the Spanish rider fended off repeated attacks from the championship leader to take the chequered flag by just 0.165 seconds. Third-placed Yari Montella, also on Ducati, finished 6.7 seconds after the 23-lap race. Every rider on the grid opted for standard supersoft SCX rear tyres combined with the soft SC1 front.

· A remarkably fast race. Compared with last year, the 23 laps were run in 32’58.594, making Race 1 28.661 seconds quicker in total than the 2025 edition – which was run with 9°C less of an asphalt temperature – for an average improvement of 1.246 seconds per lap. During his attempts to overtake Lecuona, Bulega also set the new fastest race lap of 1’25.491, improving the previous 1’25.597 record established by Toprak Razgatlıoğlu in 2024 by 0.106 seconds.

· Ninth consecutive pole position for Bulega. Earlier in the day, the Superpole once again belonged to Bulega, who claimed his ninth consecutive pole position, setting a new WorldSBK record. His 1’24.410 lap, achieved with standard extrasoft SCQ rear tyre, also established a new all-time lap record for Donington Park, lowering the previous 1’24.629 record set by Toprak Razgatlıoğlu in 2024, by 0.219 seconds.
 
· Booth-Amos and Triumph deliver on home soil. Not even a six-place grid penalty could stop Tom Booth-Amos (Triumph), as the British rider charged from ninth on the grid to win the WorldSSP Race 1 ahead of Spain’s Albert Arenas (Yamaha) and Jeremy Alcoba (Kawasaki). As in WorldSBK, although no new race lap record was set, the Supersport race was still 11.249 seconds faster than Race 1 in 2025, corresponding to an average improvement of 0.592 seconds per lap. All 34 riders opted for standard soft SC1 front and supersoft SCX rear tyre combo. Race 1 of the WorldWCR, where all riders competed on Pirelli DIABLO™ Superbike SC1 tyres front and rear, was won by Maria Herrera, while American rider Christopher Clark claimed victory in the opening race of the Yamaha R6 World Cup.

Significant performance gains with Pirelli’s new standard rear tyres
 
“The first two days at Donington were marked by unusually high temperatures for this part of the world, with the track reaching 50°C. Despite the intense heat and a surface that, as is traditionally the case here, offered relatively low grip during the opening sessions, the progressive improvement of the track conditions allowed the riders to achieve outstanding performance levels. As twelve months ago, we once again opted for the softest rear solutions in the range. The major difference for this eighth Round of the FIM Superbike World Championship is the new 2026 standard rear tyres – the SCQ and SCX – now available, which enabled a significant step forward over a single lap and, even more importantly, over race distance.
In Superpole, the extrasoft SCQ rear immediately proved highly effective, allowing Bulega to maintain his unbeaten qualifying record while lowering the all-time lap record by two tenths of a second. Although Donington has historically been one of the most demanding circuits in terms of rear tyre wear, especially on the right-hand side because of its many fast, sweeping corners, it will be interesting to see whether, should temperatures remain this high, any riders choose to tackle the Superpole Race using this specification – the softest tyre in the entire Pirelli range.
The supersoft SCX rear also confirmed its potential from the very first sessions and helped riders lap below the previous 2024 race lap record, already during Free Practice. However, the most significant figure is not the one-tenth improvement in the fastest race lap compared with the old record, but rather the gain over the full race distance. Congratulations to Iker Lecuona on his maiden WorldSBK victory: he completed the 23 laps of Race 1 more than 28 seconds faster than the 2025 winner, corresponding to an average improvement of over 1.2 seconds per lap. These figures clearly demonstrate how our continuous development work is translating into consistent performance gains, both over a single lap and across the full race distance”.