Newsletter

The official race report service of Kawasaki Racing Team.

MOTUL FIM World Superbike Championship

As the most prestigious and high-profile motorcycle racing series based on showroom machines, Kawasaki is rightly proud of its record in the WorldSBK championship.

Beginning in the UK in 1998 at Donington Park, the FIM Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK) has played host to some incredible racing and highly revered riders in the ensuing three and a half decades.

For Kawasaki, that meant a win thanks to Frenchman Adrien Morillas on a GPX750 based machine in the inaugural season and an uninterrupted presence in the championship every year since that first flag dropped in April some thirty five years ago.

In fact, Kawasaki was an early winner in the riders’ title chase, thanks to American Scott Russell in 1993 riding a 750cc four-cylinder ZX machine. Tom Sykes was the next Kawasaki champ in 2013 and six-times World Champion Jonathan Rea then dominated in an unequalled winning streak of six titles from 2015 onwards.

Such has been the recent success of the Ninja model that Kawasaki won six consecutive Riders’ and Manufacturers’ titles despite numerous changes to the technical regulations. In addition, five Teams’ titles have also been gathered in the recent past by the official KRT squad.

The Ninja dynasty of machines had won 178 individual WorldSBK race victories up to the end of the 2023 season, beginning with Morillas, with a roll of honour including Doug Chandler, Rob Phillis, Aaron Slight, Scott Russell, Anthony Gobert, Akira Yanagawa, Hitoyasu Izutsu, Chris Walker, Tom Sykes, Loris Baz, Toprak Razgatlioglu, Alex Lowes plus, of course, six-times champion Jonathan Rea.

Going into 2024 the podium-scoring total for Ninja pilots stands at 542 from  941 races started. Kawasaki has taken 108 pole positions in that time too.

Kawasaki has been an ever-present in WorldSBK racing and from the earliest days to now has fielded starters in more WorldSBK races than any other manufacturer.

With a new look Kawasaki Racing Team rider line up, and other personnel and role changes inside the official squad in 2024, race fans the world over Kawasaki fans can count on is the unstinting dedication of the envied combination of the KRT superbike team in Europe and KMC engineers in Japan creating a refreshed enterprise with a global reach of followers and significant presence for the Kawasaki brand once again.

FIM SUPERSPORT WORLDSSP CHAMPIONSHIP

The FIM Supersport World Championship (WorldSSP) became a full status FIM world title back in 1999, after two seasons as a World Series.

All the main Japanese manufacturers have won the title for themselves along the way. Kawasaki has earned the Manufacturers’ title three times in all.
 
In the Riders’ Championship Kawasaki competitors have scored top spot - in 2001 with Andrew Pitt before Kenan Sofuoglu won the title for Kawasaki in 2012, 2015 and most recently in 2016.
 
The first Kawasaki race win in the full FIM WorldSSP championship was the first race of the 1999 season itself, with British rider Iain Macpherson scoring full points at Kyalami in South Africa. Andrew Pitt, Fabien Foret, Joan Lascorz, Broc Parkes, Randy Krummenacher, Lucas Mahias and privateer Rafaelle de Rosa have also posted race wins on the middleweight Ninja. Kawasaki has now scored 45 individual race wins since 1999.
 
Kawasaki riders scored 14 podium places - including De Rosa’s famous final round race win - in the 2021 WorldSSP championship, which was the last in its long-standing format before a new era will be introduced in 2022.
 
A wide array of engine capacities and formats are now allowed in WorldSSP but all must remain largely as standard, with engine tuning, peak revs and other performance parameters tightly regulated and constantly reviewed. A proven winning package in WorldSSP the Ninja ZX-6R will be run by the long-standing Kawasaki Puccetti Racing team, with exciting new entries by the MTM Kawasaki and Prodina Racing teams. The latter two teams are moving up from the WorldSSP300 class, with exciting talents Adrian Huertas (the 2021 WorldSSP300 champion for Kawasaki) and Tom Booth-Amos joining the class.