Wayne Rainey
Jorge Lorenzo
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Jorge Lorenzo leads 4 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Wayne Rainey at #9 and Jorge Lorenzo at #10.
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The case for Wayne Rainey
Three consecutive 500cc world championships from 1990 to 1992, with 24 wins and 65 podiums from 94 Grand Prix starts, all achieved in what is widely regarded as the deepest premier-class field ever assembled, against Kevin Schwantz, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Gardner, Mick Doohan and John Kocinski. Rainey's Yamaha YZR500 was rarely the fastest bike; his method was relentless consistency and a refusal to make the error his rivals eventually would. He was leading the 1993 championship by 11 points from Schwantz when he crashed at Misano in September, breaking his spine and losing the use of his legs. He was 32 and had won three of the previous four titles. He returned as a team owner and later raced hand-controlled machinery, and the sport's modern safety standards owe much to what happened to him.
The case for Jorge Lorenzo
Five world championships: 250cc in 2006 and 2007, and MotoGP in 2010, 2012 and 2015. Lorenzo took 68 Grand Prix wins from 297 starts, 47 of them in the premier class, along with 114 premier podiums and 69 career poles. He is the purest exponent of the corner-speed style that Yamaha's inline-four M1 rewarded, a rider whose lap times could be laid on top of one another for an entire race distance. Two moments define him: riding at Assen in 2013 two days after surgery to plate a broken collarbone, and the 2015 championship, won by five points from Rossi in a season that ended in open hostility. His Ducati years from 2017 to 2018 were slow to start but produced three wins once the bike was adapted to him, before a difficult final season at Honda.