Ducati takes 400th win in World Superbikes

Round 3 of the 2023 Motul FIM Superbike World Championship at Assen saw Ducati dominate, with a clean sweep across World Superbike and World Supersport categories, made all the sweeter as Ducati also recorded their 400th win in World Superbikes.

Aruba.it Racing’s Alvaro Bautista achieved the milestone win in Race 2 at Assen, backing up from victories in Race 1 and the Superpole Race. Ducati’s tally of 400 wins is more than double that of their nearest rival, Kawasaki (177 at time of writing), while the 400th win was also Bautista’s 40th for the brand.

"I am very happy to have put my signature on such an important milestone as the 400th victory for Ducati in Superbike,” Bautista said.

Bautista, the current World Champion, continues a Ducati presence in World Superbikes (WSBK) that goes back to when the production-based category started.

Back in 1988, Marco Lucchinelli took the aggregate win at the very first WSBK round at Donington, while in 1990, Raymond Roche became the first Ducati rider to win the WSBK World Championship.

Doug Polen, Giancarlo Falappa and Stephene Mertens added to Ducati’s tally in the early 1990s before the big names, like Carl Fogarty (who achieved Ducati’s 100th win), John Kocinski, Pierfrancesco Chili, Troy Corser and Troy Bayliss were part of Ducati’s dominance of the category that stretched into the early 2000s.

Since then, names like Neil Hodgson, James Toseland, Lorenzo Lanzi, Michel Fabrizio and others have added to the winning list, while Carlos Checa would notch Ducati’s 300th win and take the riders’ world championship in 2011.

The brand from Borgo Panigale went more than a decade before their next riders’ championship, and while they were still winning races in this period, thanks to Chaz Davies and Marco Melandri, it would be the introduction of the Panigale V4 R and the arrival of Alvaro Bautista in 2019 that re-ignited their presence in WSBK. Bautista won the first 11 races of the 2019 season, and while he ultimately missed out on the championship that year, a return to Ducati in 2022 resulted in the ultimate reward.

At time of writing, Fogarty remains Ducati’s most successful rider in WSBK with 55 wins, followed by Bayliss with 52, but should Bautista continue his winning ways this year and into 2024, he’ll surpass both.

Along with 32 different riders, six generations of bikes have been part of Ducati’s 400 WSBK victories, starting with the 851 v-twin and continuing through the 916 and its derivatives, 999, 1098, 1198 and Panigale v-twin, right up to today’s four-cylinder Panigale V4.