Loris Capirossi officially became a MotoGP Legend on Saturday, inducted at Misano by MotoGP CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta in front of his family, friends, and colleagues. It’s the kind of ceremony that turns a career into history, and Capirossi’s history is genuinely one of the sport’s deepest.
Loris Capirossi’s Career by the Numbers
Across 328 starts spanning 22 seasons, Capirossi collected 29 Grand Prix wins, 99 podiums, 41 pole positions, and three world titles. He took the 1990 125cc crown at 17 years and 165 days old, making him the youngest Grand Prix World Champion at the time, a record Pedro Acosta broke by exactly one day in 2021.
For more than three decades, Capirossi also held a different distinction: the last rider to win the title in his rookie 125cc season, a mark Acosta didn’t match until Moto3 came along. Between his maiden win at the 1990 British GP and his final one at the 2007 Japanese GP, 17 years and 49 days passed, the second-longest winning career in the sport’s history behind only Valentino Rossi’s 20 years and 311 days.
Loris Capirossi Gave Ducati Its First MotoGP Win
One result stands above the stat sheet. Capirossi won Ducati’s first-ever MotoGP race at the 2003 Catalan GP, the manufacturer’s debut MotoGP season, and the brand’s first Grand Prix win in any class since Mike Hailwood’s victory at the 1959 Ulster GP.
He’d go on to win with three different manufacturers across his career, Yamaha, Honda, and Ducati, a feat matched by only four other riders in the sport’s history: Hailwood, Randy Mamola, Eddie Lawson, and Maverick Viñales. Add Suzuki to the podium column, and Capirossi scored top-three finishes on four different marques entirely.
Capirossi retired at the end of 2011 in Valencia as the all-time record holder for Grand Prix starts, a mark that’s since been broken but stood as the benchmark for years. His #65 was formally retired from MotoGP in 2016, and he now serves as the series’ Race Direction representative, still shaping the sport from a different seat.
Loris Capirossi’s Emotional Induction Speech
Capirossi thanked every manufacturer he’d raced for by name, crediting Honda for his first two titles, Yamaha for his first 500cc win, Aprilia for a third championship in 1998, and Ducati for the chance to fight for the title all the way to the end in 2006.
He dedicated the honor to his family, “my mum, my dad, my brother, my wife and my son,” before landing on the detail that said the most about what the day actually meant to him.
“In racing, always one or two hours before the race started, I’d feel strange in my stomach, butterflies, and that happened again this morning,” Capirossi said. His induction follows a long line of MotoGP Legend honorees, but few carry the specific weight of having launched a manufacturer’s entire premier-class winning history in a single afternoon at Catalunya.
Twenty-two seasons after his rookie year, Capirossi is still getting nervous before a race, just not the kind he used to line up for. That’s not nostalgia talking. It’s the same instinct that made him a champion still running, decades later, in a paddock he never actually left.
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