The Superbike World Championship (World SBK) continues its rise in power at the end of summer with two days of private testing organized Monday and Tuesday on the MotorLand Aragon circuit.
An interesting step, because the Spanish circuit also appears on the official 2025 calendar, from September 26 to 28, and constitutes an excellent comparison ground to gauge the forces present between the new Ducati Panigale V4-R 2026 of Nicholas Bulega and the BMW M1000RR driven by Toprak Razgatlıoğlu.
Ducati struck hard with its top rider at the very end of a day largely disrupted by rain, but BMW responded the next day with its own, confirming that the battle for sporting supremacy is more intense than ever, with also a glimpse of the technical clash to come…
Day 1 – Nicolo Bulega’s demonstration
From the first day of testing, Nicholas Bulega
managed to reconcile the best time of the session with the work done on the Ducati Panigale V4-R 2026 (fifth fastest time overall on this bike, after 24 laps). As we've already seen, the latest Borgo Panigale production bike abandons the single-sided swingarm and is equipped with MotoGP-style downwash ducts and a high-performance gearbox.
The Italian driver set a time of 1'48.829, more than half a second faster than Toprak Razgatlıoglu, his most direct rival, but a second slower than the Superpole he won last year in 1'47.840.
Behind them, Sam Lowes (Team Elf Marc VDS) , an excellent third, confirmed his constant progress. Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Ducati) finished 4th on his 2025 Panigale, ahead of Xavi Vierge (Honda HRC) et Michael van der Mark (ROKiT BMW Motorrad).
As expected, Sergio Garcia made his WorldSBK debut riding the Honda HRC, replacingIker Lecuona...
Day 2 – Toprak and BMW’s response
If the first day had placed Ducati at the top of the timesheets, the second, sunny, completely relaunched the situation, this time on a dry track from the morning. Toprak Razgatlıoglu, with his usual mastery of late braking and his spectacular style, set the absolute best time in 1'48.598, better than the day before but still slower than the 2024 Superpole.
Nicholas Bulega focused on the 2026 model, also tested all day yesterday by Álvaro Bautista (with the 4th time in the morning), despite his departure to Barni next year to replace Danilo Petrucci.
Under the heading of assessments, Marcel Schroëtter was able to ride the official BMW M 1000 RR, remaining a possibility to fill the second place next to Danilo Petrucci in 2026, alongside Miguel Oliveira ou Paul Espargaro.
Photo credit: worldsbk.com
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