Casey Stoner
Eddie Lawson
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Casey Stoner leads 3 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Casey Stoner at #6 and Eddie Lawson at #8.
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The case for Casey Stoner
Two premier-class titles that most of the paddock rates far above their number. In 2007 Stoner won ten races on the Ducati Desmosedici and gave the factory its first riders' championship; no other rider won a title on that machine until Francesco Bagnaia in 2022, and several world champions failed to be competitive on it. In 2011 he moved to Honda and won ten more races and a second crown. His premier-class record is 38 wins, 39 poles and 69 podiums from 115 starts, with 45 Grand Prix wins in total across three classes. Stoner's distinguishing skill was riding beyond the point where the rear tyre was sliding, controlling spin by feel in an era when rivals leaned on electronics. He retired at 27, at the end of the 2012 season, which is the only real argument against him.
The case for Eddie Lawson
Four 500cc world championships, in 1984, 1986 and 1988 with Yamaha and in 1989 with Honda, making him the first rider to win back-to-back premier titles on machinery from different manufacturers. Rossi did not repeat the feat until 2004. Lawson's numbers, 31 wins and 78 podiums from 127 starts, understate a career built on a specific method: he raced the championship rather than the Grand Prix, taking the available result rather than the maximum one, which earned him the nickname Steady Eddie. In a two-stroke era where crashing was routine, his finishing rate was extraordinary. The 1989 switch to Honda, made to work with engineer Erv Kanemoto on a bike he had never ridden, is the single strongest line on his record: he beat the factory Yamahas he had just left.