The oldest motorsport world championship runs on bikes you cannot buy
Grand Prix motorcycles are built purely to race. No dealer sells them and none are legal on public roads. Since 1949 they have contested the oldest world championship in motorsport, a series shaped by rule changes, walkouts by Japanese factories, and a long battle between two-stroke and four-stroke engines.
Big national motorcycle races were being called Grand Prix events from the early twentieth century. In 1949 the newly founded Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme coordinated the rules so that chosen events could count toward official world titles. Unlike production-based series such as World Superbikes or the Isle of Man TT, which use modified road bikes, Grand Prix racing relies on prototypes. Its top class was long known as 500cc and has been called MotoGP since 2002, with Moto2 and Moto3 beneath it.
Over the decades the grid has included 50cc, 80cc, 125cc, 250cc, 350cc, 500cc and 750cc solo classes, plus sidecars, which disappeared from world championship events after 1996. Four-stroke engines dominated through the 1950s and most of the 1960s. Then, in 1969, the governing body capped all classes at six gears and most at two cylinders, citing spiralling costs. Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha walked out, leaving MV Agusta as virtually the only factory team until Yamaha came back in 1973 and Suzuki in 1974, both with two-strokes.
Because the premier rules allowed 500cc and four cylinders regardless of engine type, two-strokes, which fire on every crank rotation instead of every other one, took over completely. Honda tried to revive the four-stroke with its NR500 in 1979 but failed, and by 1983 it too was winning with a two-stroke. The balance only flipped back when the four-stroke MotoGP era began in 2002; today all three classes use four-strokes.
Giacomo Agostini remains the most successful rider across all classes, with 15 titles and 122 wins, and he also holds the premier-class record of eight championships, one more than Valentino Rossi and Marc Márquez. Rossi has the most premier-class victories, 89. Rules are set by a commission of the governing body, the teams, the manufacturers and the rights holder Dorna, and since 2025 Liberty Media has organised the championship.
Source: Grand Prix motorcycle racing
