🏍️GOAT Rankings

Nine world titles and 115 Grand Prix wins across 125cc, 250cc, 500cc and MotoGP, plus records that still stand for premier-class victories, 89, and premier-class podiums, 199, from 432 career starts over 26 seasons. Rossi won the last 500cc two-stroke title in 2001 and the first MotoGP four-stroke title in 2002, then made the defining move of the modern era: he joined a Yamaha that had not won a race in 2003, won first time out at Welkom in 2004 and took the championship, then repeated it in 2005. Titles followed again in 2008 and 2009. His durability is the outlier. He was still winning Grands Prix in 2017 at 38, seventeen years after his first premier-class win, and finished runner-up in 2015 after the most bitter title fight of the era. He also did more than anyone to turn MotoGP into a global commercial property.

Nine world championships: 125cc in 2010, Moto2 in 2012 and seven premier-class titles in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2025. He became the youngest premier champion at 20 years and 266 days, having already become the youngest premier-class winner at Austin aged 20 years and 63 days. In 2014 he won 13 of 18 races, still the single-season record. Through the end of 2025 he had 73 premier-class wins, second only to Rossi, 99 career wins and 126 premier podiums from 206 starts. The 2025 season was the most statistically dominant on record: 11 Grands Prix, 14 Sprints and 545 points, a total no rider had reached, in his first year with the factory Ducati. It came after five operations on his right arm, 30 races missed and 2,184 days between championships, which is the strongest single argument in his favour.

Nine world championships in ten seasons: 250cc in 1961, 1966 and 1967, 350cc in 1966 and 1967, and four consecutive 500cc titles from 1962 to 1965 with MV Agusta. He took 76 Grand Prix wins from just 152 starts, 37 of them in the premier class, and 112 podiums, all before his 28th birthday. Hailwood's range is what separates him: he won world titles on MV Agusta and Honda, competed across four capacity classes in a single weekend, and won 14 Isle of Man TTs. After leaving bikes he raced in Formula 1 across 50 entries with two podiums, and was awarded the George Medal for pulling Clay Regazzoni from a burning car at Kyalami in 1973. In 1978, aged 38 and eleven years out of the sport, he returned to the Isle of Man and won the Formula One TT on a Ducati.

Five consecutive 500cc world championships from 1994 to 1998, a run matched in the premier class only by Agostini's seven. Doohan took 54 wins, 58 pole positions and 95 podiums from 137 starts, all with Honda, and every one of those wins came in the premier class. His 1997 season remains a benchmark: twelve victories from fifteen races, with two second places and a crash while leading his home Grand Prix by more than six seconds. The context makes it heavier. A crash in practice at Assen in 1992 left him with permanent damage to his right leg and close to amputation; he lost that year's title to Wayne Rainey by four points, and rode the rest of his career with a thumb-operated rear brake because his right foot could no longer work the pedal. A crash at Jerez in 1999 ended his career.

Two premier-class titles that most of the paddock rates far above their number. In 2007 Stoner won ten races on the Ducati Desmosedici and gave the factory its first riders' championship; no other rider won a title on that machine until Francesco Bagnaia in 2022, and several world champions failed to be competitive on it. In 2011 he moved to Honda and won ten more races and a second crown. His premier-class record is 38 wins, 39 poles and 69 podiums from 115 starts, with 45 Grand Prix wins in total across three classes. Stoner's distinguishing skill was riding beyond the point where the rear tyre was sliding, controlling spin by feel in an era when rivals leaned on electronics. He retired at 27, at the end of the 2012 season, which is the only real argument against him.

Three consecutive 500cc world championships from 1978 to 1980, the first of them as a rookie, from a career of only 60 Grand Prix starts. Roberts took 24 wins, 22 in the premier class, and 44 podiums, having already won back-to-back AMA Grand National titles in 1973 and 1974 and completed the Grand Slam of victories across all five American dirt-track and road-race disciplines. His influence outweighs his totals. He imported dirt-track technique to Grand Prix racing, deliberately breaking rear traction to steer a 500cc two-stroke, and every rider since has ridden some version of that. Off track he was equally consequential: his threatened breakaway World Series in 1979 forced the FIM to improve circuit safety and lifted rider payments dramatically. He later ran his own team and built his own three-cylinder 500cc machine.

Four 500cc world championships, in 1984, 1986 and 1988 with Yamaha and in 1989 with Honda, making him the first rider to win back-to-back premier titles on machinery from different manufacturers. Rossi did not repeat the feat until 2004. Lawson's numbers, 31 wins and 78 podiums from 127 starts, understate a career built on a specific method: he raced the championship rather than the Grand Prix, taking the available result rather than the maximum one, which earned him the nickname Steady Eddie. In a two-stroke era where crashing was routine, his finishing rate was extraordinary. The 1989 switch to Honda, made to work with engineer Erv Kanemoto on a bike he had never ridden, is the single strongest line on his record: he beat the factory Yamahas he had just left.

Three consecutive 500cc world championships from 1990 to 1992, with 24 wins and 65 podiums from 94 Grand Prix starts, all achieved in what is widely regarded as the deepest premier-class field ever assembled, against Kevin Schwantz, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Gardner, Mick Doohan and John Kocinski. Rainey's Yamaha YZR500 was rarely the fastest bike; his method was relentless consistency and a refusal to make the error his rivals eventually would. He was leading the 1993 championship by 11 points from Schwantz when he crashed at Misano in September, breaking his spine and losing the use of his legs. He was 32 and had won three of the previous four titles. He returned as a team owner and later raced hand-controlled machinery, and the sport's modern safety standards owe much to what happened to him.

Five world championships: 250cc in 2006 and 2007, and MotoGP in 2010, 2012 and 2015. Lorenzo took 68 Grand Prix wins from 297 starts, 47 of them in the premier class, along with 114 premier podiums and 69 career poles. He is the purest exponent of the corner-speed style that Yamaha's inline-four M1 rewarded, a rider whose lap times could be laid on top of one another for an entire race distance. Two moments define him: riding at Assen in 2013 two days after surgery to plate a broken collarbone, and the 2015 championship, won by five points from Rossi in a season that ended in open hostility. His Ducati years from 2017 to 2018 were slow to start but produced three wins once the bike was adapted to him, before a difficult final season at Honda.

Seven world championships in nine seasons of Grand Prix racing: the 500cc title in 1956, 1958, 1959 and 1960, and the 350cc title in 1958, 1959 and 1960, taking the double in each of those three years. He won 38 Grands Prix, 22 of them in the premier class, almost all on MV Agusta after starting with Norton. In 1958 and 1959 he was close to unbeatable in both classes he contested. He then walked away from motorcycles at 26 and moved to cars, winning the 1964 Formula 1 world championship with Ferrari, which makes him the only person to have won world titles on two and four wheels. That crossover, together with his later career as a constructor, gives him a place on any list even though his motorcycle career was short.

Six world championships: the 500cc title in 1951, 1953, 1954 and 1955, and the 350cc title in 1951 and 1952. Duke won 33 Grands Prix and 50 podiums from 89 starts, 22 of the wins in the premier class, and was the first rider to take premier-class titles with two different manufacturers, Norton in 1951 and Gilera from 1953. He is also the sport's first genuine modernist: he commissioned a local tailor to make him a one-piece racing suit, replacing the two-piece leathers everyone else wore, and his smooth, low-drag style became the template for road racing technique. In 1956 the FIM suspended him for six months for supporting a riders' strike over start money, which cost him any chance of a fourth consecutive 500cc crown.