It’s back to where it all began; the 2024 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship heads to Donington Park, where the first WorldSBK race fired into life some 36 years ago. Records will be set straight this weekend too, with Championship leader Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) seeking a second consecutive triple, whilst plenty of other riders are keen to make their own mark.
300 – Alex Lowes (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) needs three starts to become the sixth rider in WorldSBK history with 300 starts.
20×200 – The Superpole Race will make Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Team Motocorsa Racing) the 20th rider with at least 200 race starts in WorldSBK.
100 – It’s becoming a hard one for Spain: at Donington, Spain has the third chance to reach 100 wins; they have 98. They’re 5th in the all-time list behind the UK (307), USA (119), Australia (118), Italy (109).
99 – Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) needs two podiums to reach 100; Chaz Davies has 99.
95 – The countdown for Bautista has started: he has 95 podiums for Ducati, with the record just five away: Carl Fogarty at 100.
59 – Ducati have built up 59 podium finishes in Donington. Kawasaki are second-best with 54.
50 – Jonathan Rea (Pata Prometeon Yamaha) needs two races to set the record of WorldSBK starts 50 races higher than his closest challenger (427 to Troy Corser’s 377).
24 – British riders have won 24 races at Donington Park: in 2018, Michael van der Mark stopped a record sequence of 11 wins by British riders at Donington. It was also a first win for the Netherlands.
18 – Rea set the record of Donington podium finishes last year with 18 from Tom Sykes who has 17.
10 – 2024 marks the 10th anniversary of Ducati’s last Superpole in Donington (2014, Davide Giugliano). Despite this drought, they won’t be reached soon as their pole tally here is 15; Kawasaki is next at 10.
9 – 27 different winners at Donington: the most successful is Tom Sykes at nine, followed by Fogarty, Rea and Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) at six.
9-6 – WorldSBK arrives in the track in which BMW scored its first win in the hands of Marco Melandri, back in 2012. 12 years on and Razgatlioglu has the first chance to equal Melandri for BMW wins, nine, the highest value for the German manufacturer.
4 – ‘El Turco’ is running a streak of four wins for the first time in his career. With a win in Race 1, he will move to the top-14 streaks; with a full sweep, he will enter the top-10, as the 8th spot is occupied by a string of 7 run by Doug Polen in 1991.
1 – Donington Park was the stage of the first career win of four-time World Champion Carl Fogarty, back in 1992, Race 2, as well as his last win in the UK, with the #1 in Race 1 of Donington Park, 1999. It’s also the host of the first ever WorldSBK race from 1988, won by Davide Tardozzi.
1 – BMW recorded their first WorldSBK win at Donington Park in 2012, Race 1, that was also a 1-2 with Marco Melandri winning and Leon Haslam as runner-up.
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Source: WorldSBK.com