Nicolo Bulega rolled out of the official two-day WorldSBK test at Misano on Wednesday with his championship lead intact and his Aruba.it Ducati setting times within 0.1 seconds of the race lap record. The reigning World Superbike champion led the closing session of the test on Thursday, beating new factory teammate Iker Lecuona and re-stating the form that has carried him to 19 wins in a row across the opening rounds of 2026.
The Misano test is a key marker on the WorldSBK calendar in any year, with the championship returning to the Marco Simoncelli circuit for the next round, and it is the venue all the Italian-bound teams use to validate set-ups in the same conditions they will face on race weekend. Bulega's lap, set on race-tyre simulation runs rather than soft-tyre qualifying experiments, fed the impression inside the Ducati garage that the championship's most dominant rider has more to come.
The order behind him was the more interesting picture. Lecuona, brought into the factory Aruba.it Ducati seat to replace Alvaro Bautista this year, finished second across both days as he continues to grow into the V4 R after a sequence of strong finishes at Most. The pairing of Bulega and Lecuona was always going to be one of WorldSBK's headline storylines of 2026, and the gap was small enough by the end of the test to suggest the factory Ducati team-mates may be the new headline rivalry of the season once Bulega's win streak is broken.
Beyond the factory Ducati pairing, the Misano test exposed a series of grid changes that did not exist at Most three weeks ago. BMW substituted Danilo Petrucci out of the test programme and brought in a development rider on its M1000RR, with team sources framing the change as a calendar test rather than a permanent move. Honda welcomed Jonathan Rea-era endurance specialist Jake Dixon back to its HRC line-up for the Misano running, with the Fireblade still chasing the pace at the front of the field and the team using the test to evaluate the Briton in an HRC seat.
The weekend ahead is the first home round of the year for the Aruba.it factory team. Ducati's home race weekend at Misano always carries an additional layer of significance for Bulega, the Italian who emerged from the Ducati's Pramac feeder ranks. His 19 consecutive wins from the opening of 2026 have drawn comparisons with the early career streaks of Doug Polen and Carl Fogarty, although the 26-year-old has refused to engage with the historical milestones publicly.
The broader title context is now sharper than it has looked at any point in the season. With Toprak Razgatlioglu absent from the WorldSBK paddock since his switch to Prima Pramac Yamaha in MotoGP, Bulega's only consistent challenger has been Lecuona, and the Misano test gives the Spaniard a baseline at the next venue with the entire factory infrastructure behind him. Behind the Aruba.it Ducati, Alex Lowes for Kawasaki, Andrea Locatelli for Yamaha and the BMW factory pair of Toprak's former teammate and Michael van der Mark were the closest of the other manufacturers.
The WorldSBK paddock now packs up for the long break before the Misano round itself. Free practice opens early Friday, with race-day Sunday closing out the next chapter of Bulega's grip on the world title.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/bulega-misano-test-record-pace-lecuona-worldsbk-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
