Bulega Leaves Jerez with One Last Win in the Rain

The rain arrived late at Jerez, when the season had already given Nicolò Bulega most of what he could have wanted. The championship was his. The record book had been rewritten across the year. Yet there was still one more race to answer, and Bulega answered it with a 52nd WorldSBK victory, closing the final afternoon with the same authority that had shaped so much of his 2026 campaign.

Bulega won Race 2 on Sunday, 18 October, completing a clean sweep of the Jerez weekend. Iker Lecuona finished second, 4.696 seconds behind his Ducati team-mate. Sam Lowes took third after passing Álvaro Bautista on the final lap as rain began to soften the last five laps of the 20-lap race. Bautista finished fourth, with Yari Montella and Lorenzo Baldassarri completing the top six.

A final race with one more decision in it

The title had been settled at Cremona, so Jerez was not carrying a championship calculation into its final race. That did not make the afternoon feel routine. Bulega was chasing another mark in a season that had already taken his single-year victory total beyond the previous benchmark. The final result also brought his career tally level with Troy Bayliss at 52 WorldSBK wins, joining one of Ducati’s most celebrated champions on the all-time list.

The race asked a different question in its closing stages. Rain changed the surface without stopping the field, leaving each rider to judge how much of the established line could still be trusted. Bulega kept the lead and the margin. Lecuona stayed close enough to make the team’s one-two feel earned rather than gifted. Behind them, Sam Lowes found his opening against Bautista on the last lap and took the final podium position.

Bulega’s fastest lap was 1:37.573. The number is a neat detail from a race in which changing grip made consistency matter as much as outright speed. A rider can be quick over one lap and still lose confidence when rain moves across the circuit. The champion’s final win came from keeping the motorcycle composed while the conditions asked the field to reconsider each braking point.

A Ducati one-two at the end of a long season

Lecuona’s second place completed a weekend in which the Aruba.it Racing Ducati riders occupied the front of the story together. He had already finished runner-up in the championship, ending the year on 563 points. Bulega’s final total was 726. Yari Montella completed the top three in the standings on 318, ahead of Sam Lowes on 268 and Alex Lowes on 259.

Those totals tell the shape of a season more clearly than one finish can. Bulega’s title was secured before the finale, while the closing rounds allowed the rest of the field to put its own last mark on the campaign. The Jerez result gave Lecuona a strong final afternoon and left Montella holding third overall. Sam Lowes’ pass for the Race 2 podium gave the final lap a small, vivid contest of its own.

A season’s numbers can make dominance look smooth. The racing is rarely so simple. A rider must repeat fast laps over different circuits, keep a machine working through changing temperatures and carry the concentration to the end of a long calendar. Bulega’s 726 points and 52 career wins are extraordinary totals, but the final five laps at Jerez offered a useful reminder that every result still has to be ridden.

The closing page of an era

Jerez also marked WorldSBK’s last race weekend with Pirelli as its tyre supplier before the announced change for 2027. That gives the final result a place in the series’ technical history as well as its sporting record. The details of a tyre partnership live in compounds, construction and the feedback that riders bring back to engineers. On race day, they appear in the trust a rider places in the front contact patch while braking, or the drive a rear tyre can sustain when a corner opens.

For Bulega, the immediate memory is simpler: the flag, the final win and a season finished on his terms. He had arrived as champion and left with all three Jerez victories, a career total level with Bayliss and a points score of 726. The season now belongs to the record book. The next one will begin with a new technical conversation and a field that has spent a year measuring itself against him.

The rain gave the final afternoon a softer edge, but it did not diminish the finish. WorldSBK left Jerez with its champion on top, his team-mate beside him and Sam Lowes earning the last available step of the podium on the final lap. It was a fitting close: a record-setting campaign reduced, for one final moment, to a rider choosing the right line and making it count.