Major honours
Of Japan's big four, Kawasaki sits furthest from a premier-class title, yet it has left a clear mark on both Grand Prix and production-based racing. In the late 1970s, Kork Ballington won the 250cc and 350cc titles in the same year, in both 1978 and 1979, a double achieved two seasons running, and Anton Mang carried the run into the early 1980s. In the premier class, Kawasaki contested MotoGP from 2003 to 2008 without a win and withdrew its factory effort during the 2009 financial crisis. Kawasaki's real dynasty is in Superbike. Jonathan Rea won six straight titles from 2015 to 2020 on the Ninja ZX-10R, the most in the series' history. What the company has shown is that prototype Grand Prix racing and production-based racing are genuinely different sports, and failure in one can coexist entirely with dominance in the other.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
In Superbike, Kawasaki's rivalry with Ducati has run for more than 30 years, and Jonathan Rea's six-title streak lines up almost exactly with the Bologna camp's lost decade in that series. In Grand Prix racing, Kawasaki ultimately withdrew without ever catching its fellow Japanese manufacturers.