- Bulega wins Assen Race 1 to extend streak as Lecuona mounts challenge.
- Petrucci’s long lap penalty error ends his points-scoring hopes.
- Support class victories decided by margins under a tenth each.
The classification sheet will show yet another Nicolo Bulega win, but Assen’s magic was the real showstopper on Saturday. Apart from WSBK, all three support class winners got over the line by a margin of under a tenth. It was simply one of those days when you had to be there as a fan.
Even Bulega had to shake off the challenge from Aruba.it Racing teammate Iker Lecuona. The No.7 Ducati man got the holeshot into turn 1 but was overtaken by Bulega on lap 2.
This would have been game over for many already, but late rain meant Lecuona came roaring back on lap 15. He gobbled up over a second’s gap on that lap alone, passing the No. 11 out of the chicane.
But the championship leader wouldn’t let his 10-race winning streak end so easily. After a failed move on lap 17, Bulega barged past the Spaniard at turn 4 on lap 19 to win his 27th WorldSBK race by 1.618s.
Bulega said post-race, “It’s difficult to know how much you can push. Then, Iker overtook me, and I decided to follow him so as not to take any big risks. As it dried out, I pushed again, and my pace was good as I had saved the front tyre.”
“I knew Nicolo was going to think about the Championship, and I am in P2, so I thought about it too, but I thought maybe today is my chance to win a race,” Lecuona said after the race.
“I like tricky conditions like these a lot, so I said, ‘Why not take the risk?’ I recovered a lot of time and overtook him, but my front tyre lost a lot of pressure in the rain.”
Action galore at Assen
A fourth successive factory Ducati 1-2 was bolstered further by Sam Lowes and Alvaro Bautista, making it an all-Panigale 1-2-3-4. The latter in particular had a rocket launch from the third row to jump three places at the start.
Alex Lowes’ Bimota won the non-Ducati challenge to finish fifth, ahead of Yamaha’s Andrea Locatelli and BMW’s hard-charging Miguel Oliveira.
BMW’s other rider, Danilo Petrucci, had a Saturday to forget. A jump start from fourth handed him a double Long Lap Penalty, but the worst was yet to come. A mistake while completing the first long lap sent him into the gravel and out of the points.
Ironically, despite the rain, Race 1 in Assen was the first time since the Superpole race in Czechia last year that all starting riders finished a WorldSBK race.
Earlier in the day, Bulega capitalised on his Friday form to take pole with an all-time lap record of 1:32.144s. He finished almost a third of a second clear of Sam Lowes in P2. A late crash after setting the new benchmark only showed his human side.
The Cathedral of Speed and small margins
In WorldSSP, it was all about the Jaume Masia show. Starting from the back of the third row? That was no issue for the 25-year-old.
A late charge but still outside the podium positions on the final lap? Still, no trouble whatsoever. He stunningly pipped Yamaha’s Albert Arenas by 0.080s for his second win of 2026 and fourth in Supersport overall.
Even more astonishingly, the top six featured five different manufacturers and all finished within a second of the winner. Talk about an absolute barnstormer!
In Sportbike, Jeffrey Buis took advantage of pole-sitter and fellow home hero Loris Veneman’s opening lap crash to take victory. His winning margin was an even tighter 0.065s, and the top seven were separated by less than a second.
It was also crucially the end of Suzuki’s 12-year wait to win a WSBK category race. Their last winner? Eugene Laverty in Phillip Island in 2014.
And the women’s category more than lived up to the day’s drama as well. One-two starters, Maria Herrera and Beatriz Neila, were in a class of their own. After a lap 1 red flag, a restart, and a pulsating battle, Herrera beat her Spanish compatriot by a mere 0.083s but over 10 seconds clear of Roberta Ponziani, who rounded out the podium.
With Sunday featuring even more races, the Assen WorldSBK ticket holders would hope for more bang for their buck. And given Saturday’s sublime showing, that looks a more than safe bet.
