- Ducati have won the World Superbike Manufacturer's Championship nine times since it's formation 13 years ago.
They have also won more Superbike World Championship races than any other marque, with 167 victories. Honda come a faraway second with 62 wins.
- Brit Neil Hodgson has completed in 81 World Superbike races while Aussie Troy Bayliss has 39 starts to his credit.
Last year (2000), Hodgson was crowned British Superbike Champion after he won two Superbike races, at Brands Hatch and Donnington Park.
- Each team in the Superbike Championship will travel 75,667 miles during the season. That is the equivalent of driving three times round the globe or almost a third of the way to the moon. Each World Superbike team spends around £2,000,000 per season – excluding wages.
- Donnington Park, near Derby, is the only privately-owned racing circuit on the World Superbike schedule. Businessman Tom Wheatcroft runs the course, which is rumoured to be the most slippery of all the circuits due to planes dumping fuel as they fly into nearby East Midlands Airport.
- Neil Hodgson qualified as a bricklayer and worked in the building industry for three years before becoming a professional motorcycle racer. Meanwhile, fellow Superbike ace James Toseland is an outstanding pianist who chose a racing career instead.
- The average Superbike can reach an extraordinary 190mph. The 749cc Kawasaki ZX 7RR can reach 200mph. That's about the same speed as the Ferrari F50, which costs more than £300,000 but has a meaty 4.7litre, 12 cylinder engine.
- Currently (2001), the only Brits competing in the World Superbike Championships are Hodgson and Toseland. There are only two Americans, Colin Edwards and Bob Bob Bostrom, while Australia, Italy and France have six riders each.
- Carl Fogarty has won the World Superbike Championship a record four times and is the only Brit to have claimed the title. Four Americans, an Austrian and a Frenchman have also won but no-one can match Fogarty's 59 race wins for Ducati.
- The shortest track in the World Superbike schedule is the Laguna Seca Raceway in California, at 2¼ miles. The longest is the Curcuito van Drenthe B.V. in Holland, at just over 3¼ miles.
- Former British Superbike champion Steve Hislop claims a biking accident actually helped him recover from a broken neck. Steve, the 1995 BSB winner, first crashed at Brands Hatch last August (2000). After surgery, the nerves in his neck had stuck to scar tissue but the second accident knocked them loose and he returned to full fitness.
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