The Pirelli Portuguese Round of the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship is done and dusted, and after a triumphant return to the ‘Rollercoaster Round’, the Championship finds itself tied 3-3 in race wins for the first time since the 2022 season, when Jonathan Rea (Pata Maxus Yamaha) and Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) started the season in the same fashion. Unlike in 2024, Razgatlioglu's 2025 Portimao hat-trick was hotly contested, Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) making ‘El Turco’ work for every point as each race he nipped at the heels of the Turkish rider, overtaking him repeatedly only for the #1 to reassert his presence in P1.

“I tried everything, my pockets are empty” – Bulega exasperated after a trio of P2s despite great pace

Bulega was woken up from his dream weekend in Australia by a drastically more competitive Toprak than what we saw at Phillip Island. ‘Bulegas’ was tearing around the track all weekend; while he was the only rider who was able to keep up with the #1, just 0.317s separating them across all three races if you add up each gap the #11 was behind. Bulega showed signs of frustration throughout the weekend at his inability to defeat the defending Champion, however he maintained a positive outlook.

Bulega reflected on his weekend, saying: “Honestly, I tried everything, but three times second is not so bad, but my pockets are empty, I played all my cards, I can’t do any more than what it did. I’m still happy because normally this is a Toprak track, he’s always very strong here in Portimao, I think it’s his favourite track, so for me to battle with him here at his favourite track is good, it means we are making steps forward. This is good for me and the rest of the championship.”

“I was able to do good laps times, but they were able to go even faster” – Bautista recounts his Sunday on the track

So far this season Bautista has struggled to match the pace of Razgatlioglu and Bulega in their battles for P1, he still has been very fast, but in closing the gap to the pair at the front, the Spanish two-time World Champion has struggled. Portimao has still been a positive set of results for Bautista, a pair of P3 podiums making up for a collision with Scott Redding (MGM BONOVO Racing) which sent the two riders back to the garage early in Race 1.

On his Sunday experience across the two races, Bautista was happy to have taken home two podiums, especially considering the recovery he needed to make in the Tissot Superpole Race from P9: “I think it was a very positive Sunday, in the Superpole Race we were able to recover a lot of positions, especially in the first few laps. I missed the laps yesterday so I needed to get used to the race pace again, but after that I could keep my pace and ride confidently, so it felt really nice to finish on the podium and have a good position for Race 2. In the afternoon, I started well and was able to stay with Toprak and Bulega and Toprak, but after a few laps, they were a bit faster than yesterday, so the pace I could keep was similar to their pace yesterday and I was just going to try to keep my position up until the red flag happened. After the red flag, I had a better feeling, less fuel is less weight on the bike, and I was riding a bit easier. I was able to do good laps times, but they were able to go even faster, so we were in the same position. We used a harder compound in the front, and we were still trying to discover how they work, we found some pros and cons in the data, so now we need to try to analyse that and improve for the future to find little things to be able to keep up with Bulega and Toprak.”

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