Loris Capirossi
Loris Capirossi won world championships in the 125cc, 250cc, and MotoGP classes across a 22-season Grand Prix career, one of the longest and most durable careers in the sport's history, competing from the final years of the two-stroke era through the fully modern MotoGP period.
Loris Capirossi made his Grand Prix debut as a teenager and won the 125cc world championship in 1990 at just 17, becoming, at the time, the youngest world champion in the sport's history. He added the 250cc title the following year.
After moving up to the premier class, Capirossi built a long, consistent career across Honda, Aprilia, Suzuki, and Ducati, eventually winning the MotoGP world championship in 2003 with Ducati and delivering the Italian manufacturer's first premier-class win of the modern four-stroke era.
Capirossi raced for 22 consecutive seasons before retiring in 2011, a span covering three distinct eras of Grand Prix motorcycle racing, and went on to take up official roles within the sport, including as a MotoGP Safety Officer, drawing on that unusually broad first-hand experience.
5 Things You Might Not Know
Capirossi won the 125cc title in 1990 (as the youngest world champion in Grand Prix history at the time, aged 17), the 250cc title in 1991, and the MotoGP class in 2003, giving him a spread of success across categories matched by very few riders.
Capirossi's 1990 125cc title, won at 17 years old, set a record for the sport's youngest world champion that stood for over a decade before being broken by later riders.
Riding for Ducati, Capirossi won the manufacturer's first MotoGP race in the four-stroke era, at the 2003 Catalan Grand Prix, an important early result for a manufacturer that would go on to become a dominant force in the class two decades later.
Capirossi's career stretched from 1990 to 2011, an unusually long span that saw him race across three fundamentally different eras of the sport — two-stroke 500cc bikes, the transition to four-stroke MotoGP machines, and the fully modern MotoGP period.
After his racing career, Capirossi took on official roles within the sport's governing structure, including serving as a MotoGP Safety Officer, drawing on his decades of experience across multiple eras of machinery and circuit design.