Only one WorldSBK rider has started a season better than Nicolo Bulega in 2026

Nicolo Bulega’s start to 2026 has been almost perfect in WorldSBK, but somehow it is not the most dominant start to a season in the championship’s history.

Bulega has won all six races and scored pole position at both World Superbike rounds so far this year. He’s also led all but three of the racing laps (hence ‘almost’ perfect).

The result for him is a 56-point championship lead after six races, and the combined points of the riders in second and fourth in the standings – Iker Lecuona and Miguel Oliveira – would exactly equal his 124-point total through two rounds.

It seems impossible that anyone could achieve a better start to the season, and yet it has happened – 31 years ago, to be precise, in 1996.

That year, it was another Ducati rider who dominated the opening phase of the season.

Carl Fogarty won four of the first six races in 1995; the two he didn’t win were at round two at Misano, where he was second to Mauro Lucchiari on both occasions.

Lucchiari had retired from the first race and was seventh in Race 2 at the opening round. At round three at Donington he went 9-10, and after that 10th place in race six of the season he was 68 points behind Fogarty – a gap 12 points larger than Bulega’s at the moment after the sixth race of 2026. 

Outside of his double-win at Misano, Lucchiari scored only 106 points in 1995 and finished ninth in the final standings.

Fogarty, of course, went on to win the title that year with 13 race wins and 20 podiums from 24 races. His margin at the end of the season was 139 points over Troy Corser.

Fogarty’s 140-point haul in the first six races of 1995 were equivalent to 93.3 per cent of the points available, which is obviously 6.7 per cent less than what Bulega has achieved this year with his perfect 124-point maximum from the opening six races – which in 2026 take place over two rounds rather than the three of 1995 owing to the three-race format that includes the 12-point Superpole Race.

The bigger gap for Fogarty, then, is accounted for by a lower point score for Lucchiari in the first six races of 1995 than Leucona’s in the first six races of 2026. In fact, Lucchiari’s 72 points through the first six races of 1995 were equal to 48 per cent of the maximum 150 available, while Lecuona’s 68 points this year is equal to 54.8 per cent of the maximum 124 available.

Lecuona, then, has had a better start to the year than Lucchiari had in 1995, which is probably a good sign considering where Lucchiari ended up in the standings by the end of the season. 

But trailing his teammate already by only six points shy of the equivalent of one round is nonetheless indicative of the margin the Spaniard has to find to really take the challenge to his factory Ducati teammate, and therefore of the command Bulega has over the World Superbike field at present.