Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

FEATURE (Left) Three-time World Champion Michael Doohan is the only active SOOCc GP rider with a winning percentage of over .300. (Below) Spaniard Jorge Martinez has a winning percentage of .203, with 37 wins in 182 GP starts. (.289) with Eddie Lawson's average of .244 (31 for 127) suffering from his final two years on the Cagiva, and Kevin Schwantz coming in at .240, good enough for sixth overall But Rainey, Lawson and Schwantz had to race against each other, against Wayne Gardner and also against the likes of young lions like John Kocinski and Doohan - a real "murderer's row" of Grand Prix talent. Doohan himself, with his usual candor, said that in 1995 he was bored by racing with riders like Daryl By Dennis Noyes f every Grand Prix start was a time at bat and every win was a base hit, only Michael Doohan and Max Biaggi, among current Grand Prix stars, would be batting over .300 and - with Max's .329 average coming from the 250cc class (let's call that triple A) - only "The Mick" is hitting over .300 (.321). Now that Randy Mamola and I will, for the firsi time, have the opportunity to speak directly to an American audience as we commentate the 15 rounds of the 500cc Grands Prix that will be broadcast on a same-day basis to the United States via Speed vision and Prime Network, we'll finally be able to make full use of the growing arsenal of GP statistics that we have put together with the invaluable support of British motorcycling statistician Dr. Martin Raines. Here is a sampling of some of the stats that we have been able to compile over the last two seasons. The stat we call Career Winning Percentage is very useful for comparing current stars with riders from other periods and for showing just how dominant the current 500 and 250cc World Champions have been over the last three seasons. Among the current 75 Grand Prix riders, 31 (nearly half) have had at least one GP victory. In the 500cc class, Doohan's .321 (34 wins in 106 starts) dwarfs the 500cc winning percentage of the only other active riders to have won more than a single 500cc race. Luca Cadalora is a distant second with eight wins from 55 starts in 500 (.145). In fact, all Doohan's SOOcc rivals combined have only won 19 races, 15 fewer than the World Champion. Biaggi h"s won 24 of his 73 career 250cc starts (.329) and is trailed by RaIf Waldmann (eight of 41 for .195), and Loris Capirossi (only one of 27 in 500cc, but a stronger seven of 41 and .171 in the 250cc class). Who was the greatest 500cc rider of the last 2D years? Oearly the only way to make a meaningful comparison is by I (Below) Freddie Spencer had a career winning percentage of .323 and a pole position percentage of .419, easily the highest of all time. and the bike was down on performance. His podium appearance average is highest of all "modem" (1976 to present) riders, an incredible .771. Roberts is second at .672 and Doohan is third at .651. These numbers are more comparable to freethrow percentages than batting averages. Spencer, meanwhile, was on the pole at an astounding .419 rate (26 poles in 62 staTts) with Doohan second at .358 just ahead of the only other .300 hitters in this department - Venezuela's Johnny Cecotto, a star from the '70s who barely made our minimum number of starts (30) and Roberts. Roberts has a stranglehold on the lead in Fastest Lap Percentage. He recorded the quickest lap in the 500cc race in 24 of his 58 starts (.413), well ahead of his nearest rival Spencer (18 fastest laps in 62 starts). Doohan is currently third at .283 with 30 fastest laps in 106 starts. Finally we go to Average Points per Start as, perhaps, the best measure of effectiveness. Since the points system changed three times over the period from 1976 to the present, we have simply applied the present points system over previous seasons to produce a satisfactory system of adjusted points. We find that Rainey leads with an average of 17.39 points per start, trailed by Roberts with 17.16 and Doohan at 16.66 after averagfrtg 20.6 points per start during the 1996 season. His highest season's average was 22.6 points per start in 1995 and his average over the three years of his title reign has been 20.80 from 874 points' scored in 42 starts. (Rainey's best season was in 1991 when his average on adjusted points was 21.9.) (Left) Eddie Lawson won 31 SOOCc GPs in 127 starts - not a great winning percentage but his four World Championships mean more than most statistics. running the vital stats. Statistics won't really tell you whether, for example, Kenny Roberts and Freddie Spencer in their prime would have beaten Doohan in his prime, but they certainly show the level of dominance of each in his day. Limiting ourselves here to stats from 1976 onward (the number of true starts is difficult to obtain from the FIM archives before '76, but we are working on it), we see that only three riders managed to win over 30 percent of their 500cc starts, with Modesto masher Roberts taking the crown for the modem era, hitting a Ted Williams-like .379, followed by Freddie Spencer at .323 and Doohan who, after being knocked down by Criville·in Australia is now hitting, as stated earlier, a smart .321. Wayne Rainey won 24 of his 83 starts Beattie, <::adalora and Criville. He was harshly criticized for stating the obvious. However, with Criville now a true rival and with Beattie' and Alberto Puig recovered and Cadalora again on a Michelinshod works Yamaha - and with Carlos Checa coming of age, not to mention the arrival of two of World Superbike's best, Troy Corser and Anthony Gobert Doohan's life is unlikely ever to be boring again - especially with the Australial) using the 180-degree "screamer" engine against his "big bang" rivals. The amazing thing that stats show us about Rainey, the man who best rode the fierce "screamers" of the early '90s, is how he was able to pull in the points Sunday after Sunday, winning often, but managing to wrestle his Yamaha home to podium places when the tires were gone Of course, at the end of the day perhaps the most important statistic of all is the easiest to calculate and the simplest to state. Among all riders from 1976 onward in the 500cc class, only Eddie Lawson had four World Championships, followed by Roberts, Rainey and Doohan with three (consecutive in all three cases) and two each for Spencer and Barry Sheene. "Steady Eddie" was the ultimate bottomline rider and the only rider since Giacomo Agostini to win four 500cc titles. Streaks are always an important part of sports stats and at present the most worrying stat out there is the losing streak for 500cc riders from the USA. From 1978, the year that Roberts left the Grand National ovals and went after Sheene on the GP circuits, until 1993, American riders were dominant. The

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