MotoGP and Superbike. All the manufacturers who have achieved a double win.

11/25/2022

After MotoGP, Ducati has also won the Superbike rider title courtesy of Alvaro Bautista. A short history of all the manufacturers who have won a title in the world premier class and in WSBK in the same year.

Mission accomplished: 11 years after Carlos Checa’s win with the Althea Racing 1098R, Ducati is once again World Superbike champion. This is all down to another Spanish rider, Alvaro Bautista, who has had an amazing season riding the Aruba.it Racing Ducati team Panigale V4R.

The two bikes have very little in common including the engine technology: the 2011 Rossa was powered by an L-twin engine whereas the current one is powered by a V4 engine. However, when it comes to braking, both used Brembo calipers, steel discs and master cylinders.

The first double win for Ducati despite its 15 rider titles in SBK

Thanks to Francesco (Pecco) Bagnaia’s win in MotoGP over Fabio Quartararo, Ducati has achieved the first MotoGP-Superbike double win in its history. This is somewhat unexpected considering that the Borgo Panigale-based manufacturer has won the most in the superbike class with 15 rider titles, more than Kawasaki (8) and Honda (6) put together.

However, nine of these titles came before MotoGP came into being in 2002 and Ducati started to achieve consistent results in the world premier class.

Ducati had never competed in the 500cc class apart from a few isolated cases in the early 1970s with Bruno Spaggiari, Phil Read and Paul Smart: finishing 3rd in the 1972 Nations GP, the Italian gave Ducati its only podium position in the 500cc class. Ducati made its debut in MotoGP in 2003 and at the 6th GP in Montmelò, it succeeded in reaching the highest step of the podium with Loris Capirossi. The rider from Imola then won 2 races in 2005 and 3 in 2006, but Ducati had to wait until 2007 to win the world title.

In 2007, Ducati won the MotoGP title thanks to the newly acquired Casey Stoner who amazed everyone with 10 wins, 14 podiums, 5 pole positions and 367 points, to become champion on the home ground of the big rivals, Japan, on the day of the last World Championship win with Capirossi and Ducati.

However, that year the Japanese manufacturers got their own back in Superbike by winning the first 3 positions in the rankings with 3 different marques. Ducati had to make do with a 4th place with Bayliss, 6th place with Ruben Xaus and 7th place with Lorenzo Lanzi.

Other past 500/MotoGP - WSBK pairings

Unlike MotoGP which began in 1949, World Superbike is a relatively recent competition which started in 1988. Therefore, both competitions have been on the scene for 34 years. Let's look at the 6 past wins in the same year by the same manufacturer of the rider's title in the prototype premier class (500/MotoGP) and in the superbike class (WSBK).

1989 Honda

The second year for Superbike but the result was the same as in 1988: Fred Merkel was world champion on the Rumi team’s Honda RC30: he only needed 3 wins, less than Stéphane Mertens' 4 wins and Raymond Roche's 5, thanks to 10 podium positions and 4 fourth places.

In the 500cc class, on the other hand, Eddie Lawson won with Erv Kanemoto's Rothmans team NSR500, thanks to a brilliant second half of the season in which he overtook Wayne Rainey: 3 wins and 4 second places in the last 7 GPs.

1997 Honda

In the 500cc class, Honda swept the board three times: it won all 15 of the GPs held in 1997, obtained 15 pole positions and 15 fastest laps. Of the riders, Mick Doohan excelled in his best season ever: 12 wins and 14 podiums, 143 points ahead of the others.

The World Superbike Championship was more difficult even if on the third to last round, in Albacete, John Kocinski riding the official team’s RC45, broke ahead of Carl Fogarty (Ducati) who had to withdraw twice. The American won the title 58 points ahead of the others.

2002 Honda

The manufacturer of the Gold Wing stole the scene in 2002 too, but even if Valentino Rossi’s superiority made everything look easy in MotoGP, there was a historic duel in Superbike: Bayliss on Ducati won the first 6 races and 6 more in a row between May and July, with Colin Edwards on a VTR 1000 SP2 coming almost always 2nd. However, the American inverted the negative trend by winning the last 9 races and becoming champion 11 points ahead of his rival. In MotoGP, on the other hand, the Doctor won 10 of the first 12 GPs on his RC211V and kept his advantage.

2009 Yamaha

Valentino Rossi also costarred in the first Yamaha double win in 2009. In MotoGP, the two M1s won 10 GPs and in the end the number 46 triumphed winning his 9th and last World Championship, all of them with Brembo brakes. In Superbike, on the other hand, 2009 was the year when Yamaha won its first title: credit goes to the rookie Ben Spies who, on the official R1, managed to hold off Ducati even if moving ahead of Noriyuki Haga in the standings only came in Race 1 of the last round in Portimao.

2021 Yamaha

Yamaha had to wait until 2021 to win the Superbike title a second time. The title was won by Toprak Razgatlioglu who managed to get the better of Jonathan Rea and Kawasaki. In MotoGP, on the other hand, the M1's first 3 wins make everything look easy but then Maverick Viñales tripped up. Fabio Quartararo was the only one left with 4 wins before the break. Even if he won only one of the last 9 races, he became the first French premier class world champion.

If goes without saying that in 5 of the 6 double wins mentioned above, Brembo supplied the brake components to both riders who won the title. The only exception was in 1989: Honda only began to use Brembo the year after. Since then, first in the 500cc class and then in MotoGP, it hasn’t stopped.