A thousand races. That’s the incredible milestone reached by the World Superbike Championship, which only saw the light of day in 1988, celebrated last July 27th in Hungary with the Superpole Race.
Credit goes largely to the multiple-race format for production-based motorcycles: initially, each round featured two races, but since 2019 a third race—the shorter-distance Superpole Race—has been added to the program.
As a result, even with a calendar limited to 12 rounds, 36 races per season have been held over the past three years, rapidly increasing the number of contests.
To put things in perspective, race number 900 took place on November 12, 2022—two years and nine months before the thousandth—won by Toprak Razgatlioglu ahead of Alvaro Bautista and Jonathan Rea.
Interestingly, Razgatlioglu also took victory in race number 800 at Magny-Cours in 2019: in Race 1, the Turkish rider started from 16th on the grid, was already 7th after one lap and on the podium after three, sealing the win with a decisive last-lap overtake on Rea—his first-ever WorldSBK victory.
Back then Toprak was on a Kawasaki; by race 900 he was riding a Yamaha, and in the 1000th race, which he won by 3 seconds over Sam Lowes, he was perfectly in sync with his BMW.
The podium of race number 900 was monopolized by the three most successful riders in World Superbike history—collectively tallying 253 wins, more than a quarter of all races held.
Yet even that pales in comparison to Brembo, which missed out on victory in only 62 of the first thousand races.
In other words, motorcycles equipped with at least one Brembo braking component have won 938 races, an astonishing 94% win rate.
Brembo had already made its mark in the inaugural round, held on April 3, 1988, at Donington Park (UK). Battling for glory that day were Italians Davide Tardozzi and Marco Lucchinelli, American Fred Merkel, Briton Roger Burnett, and legendary Northern Irishman Joey Dunlop. Race 1, featuring 39 riders, was won by Tardozzi by a second over Lucchinelli, with Dunlop a distant third.
Race 2 was open only to riders who had completed at least half of Race 1, reducing the grid to 30. Once again, Lucchinelli and Tardozzi fought for victory, but Tardozzi crashed on the final lap, clearing the way for the 1981 500cc World Champion.
Merkel finished second, with Burnett completing the podium.
Points were awarded based on the combined times of the two races, giving Lucchinelli the overall win.
That year featured battles between Ducati 851s, Bimota YB4s, and Honda RC30s, all running 5 mm thick cast-iron brake discs with diameters ranging from 290 to 320 mm, depending on the track.
They were the most economical option and did not require pre-heating for effective use.
These discs were paired with two-piece Brembo calipers secured by four joint bolts. This mechanically coupled two-half design had clear rigidity limitations and was subject to different thermal expansions between the aluminum caliper body and bolts. Brembo solved these issues in the mid-1990s by introducing axial monobloc calipers, later replaced by radial calipers for even greater performance.
Cast-iron discs remained in use until 1994, mostly among privateer teams, as factory outfits and well-funded teams had long since switched to carbon.
However, cast iron is a brittle material, and the pairing with increasingly aggressive friction compounds posed a risk of failure during races.
Carbon discs were subsequently banned to control costs, and since 1995 all teams have used steel brake discs.
Brembo has continued to innovate ever since, introducing, among other advancements, calipers with external cooling fins, anti-drag systems, amplified calipers, push & pull master cylinders, ventilated discs, as well as cutting-edge brake pads and fluids. Many of these technologies later made their way to production motorcycles, benefiting millions of riders worldwide.
Turning back to the thousand WorldSBK races, Ducati stands as the undisputed leader with 443 wins, earning 20 Constructors’ Championships and 16 Riders’ Championships.
The Borgo Panigale manufacturer, always partnered with Brembo, has more wins than the next three competitors combined: Kawasaki with 180, Honda with 119, and Yamaha with 117. Aprilia ranks fifth with 52, BMW sixth with 46, Suzuki seventh with 32, and Bimota eighth with 11.
The unrivaled king is Northern Ireland’s Jonathan Rea, with 119 wins and six world titles: 104 aboard Kawasaki machinery and 15 with Honda.
Second is Toprak Razgatlioglu with 71 wins, followed by Alvaro Bautista with 63. Rounding out the Top 5 are Carl Fogarty with 59 and Troy Bayliss with 52. All five riders claimed their victories exclusively using Brembo components.
A total of sixteen nationalities have celebrated at least one win. Leading the tally is the United Kingdom with 307 victories by 15 different riders, followed by Italy with 127, the United States with 119, and Australia with 118. Spain holds a round 100 wins. Turkey is sixth with 71—all courtesy of Razgatlioglu.
Eight nations owe all their wins to a single rider: besides Turkey, there’s Ireland and New Zealand with 13 each (Eugene Laverty and Aaron Slight, respectively), Belgium with 11 (Stephane Mertens), the Netherlands with 6 (Michael van der Mark), and Germany, Austria, and Brazil with a single victory each.
With Brembo brakes, anyone can win.