Valentino Rossi
Mick Doohan
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Valentino Rossi leads 5 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Valentino Rossi at #2 and Mick Doohan at #5.
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The case for Valentino Rossi
Nine world titles and 115 Grand Prix wins across 125cc, 250cc, 500cc and MotoGP, plus records that still stand for premier-class victories, 89, and premier-class podiums, 199, from 432 career starts over 26 seasons. Rossi won the last 500cc two-stroke title in 2001 and the first MotoGP four-stroke title in 2002, then made the defining move of the modern era: he joined a Yamaha that had not won a race in 2003, won first time out at Welkom in 2004 and took the championship, then repeated it in 2005. Titles followed again in 2008 and 2009. His durability is the outlier. He was still winning Grands Prix in 2017 at 38, seventeen years after his first premier-class win, and finished runner-up in 2015 after the most bitter title fight of the era. He also did more than anyone to turn MotoGP into a global commercial property.
The case for Mick Doohan
Five consecutive 500cc world championships from 1994 to 1998, a run matched in the premier class only by Agostini's seven. Doohan took 54 wins, 58 pole positions and 95 podiums from 137 starts, all with Honda, and every one of those wins came in the premier class. His 1997 season remains a benchmark: twelve victories from fifteen races, with two second places and a crash while leading his home Grand Prix by more than six seconds. The context makes it heavier. A crash in practice at Assen in 1992 left him with permanent damage to his right leg and close to amputation; he lost that year's title to Wayne Rainey by four points, and rode the rest of his career with a thumb-operated rear brake because his right foot could no longer work the pedal. A crash at Jerez in 1999 ended his career.