Mat Oxley: Could WSBK hero Toprak Razgatlioglu beat Mark Marquez in MotoGP?

This year, world championship motorcycle racing celebrates its 75th birthday. Four decades after the inaugural 1949 series a rival championship was launched for high-performance street bikes.  If MotoGP is Formula 1 on two wheels, then World Superbike is motorcycling’s version of touring cars (or ‘tin tops’, as the Aussies like to call touring cars).

Some riders spend their entire international careers in WSBK, like six-time champion Jonathan Rea, but the series is also a popular home for former MotoGP riders who have run out of options in the premier class – 10 WSBK titles have been won by former MotoGP riders, whereas the MotoGP crown has never been won by a former WSBK rider.

That may be about to change. Toprak Razgatlioglu is arguably the most talented WSBK rider of all time, which is why people call him the Marc Márquez of superbikes. The Turk rode his rookie WSBK season in 2018, won the title with Yamaha in 2021 and at the end of last year moved to BMW, which has been in WSBK since 2009 but has never  won the title.

Earlier this year Razgatlioglu became only the second WSBK rider in history to win 10 races in a row, on a motorcycle that had achieved a total of two victories in the previous three seasons. Barring disasters he will be 2024 World Superbike champion.

What sets the charming and humble 27-year-old apart from his rivals is a mind-boggling ability to race a motorcycle like he’s a stunt rider. This comes as no surprise once you learn of his background.

Razgatlioglu’s father Arif was Turkey’s most famous stunt rider, who went by the nickname ‘Wheelie Arif’.

“When I was a kid I watched my dad doing wheelies and stoppies [lifting the rear wheel during heavy braking] every day,” he says.  “I started riding at four or five. Then I started trying wheelies. Now wheelies and stoppies feel easy for me, because I started as a stunt rider, not as a racer. After I started doing stunts my father said, ‘You can race motocross,’ so  I said, ‘OK.’ We started with KTM 50s, 65s and 85s and after that to road racing. The first road race bike I rode was a Honda CBR600RR when I was 12 or 13. The first time I touched my knee on the ground I can’t explain the feeling, it was incredible! After that my career started.”

Razgatlioglu – born in the seaside resort Alanya – also grew up doing tricks off the bike.

“When I was a child I liked doing backflips, front flips, jumping, breakdancing, everything… I was always trying this kind of thing on the beach and in the sea.”

“When I feel the rear wheel up,  I just feel  the fun”

A lifetime of doing stunts on bikes and acrobatics on the beach has given him an intuitive ability to race a motorcycle apparently out of control while being totally in control. All-time racing great ‘King’ Kenny Roberts has a (typically profane) term for riders with such exceptional abilities: “He’s got a gyro up his ass.”

Razgatlioglu is at his most spectacular when attacking corners – he brakes so heavily that he usually locks the front tyre and lifts the rear wheel off the ground. This is flirting with disaster because locking the front tyre is a very risky business and  lifting the rear makes it very difficult to enter corners in a controlled way and hit the apex.

How does he do it? “I don’t know,” he grins. “It’s not easy to explain… I just try every session, every race with the brakes and  I always try more and more. When I feel the rear wheel up, I just feel the fun. I like stunts!”

When engineers start working with Razgatlioglu they are astonished when they see his data. His long-time crew chief Phil Marron was no different.

“The first day I worked with Toprak I could see on the data that the front tyre was locking and sliding across the track,” says Marron. “And I don’t mean small locks, I mean massive locks! If that had been any other rider they would’ve been screaming at me, so I asked Toprak, ‘This looks like a problem. Do we need to fix it?’ He said, ‘No, this isn’t a problem.  I like this feeling, I control it.’ At that moment my eyebrows nearly jumped off my head!”

This is where Razgatlioglu makes the difference, because no one else in WSBK can walk this tightrope like he does. And making your time on the brakes like only he can gives you another advantage – you’re able to attack rivals in a way that gives them no chance to defend themselves. The next question is: can anybody in MotoGP walk the same tightrope?

Talk of Razgatlioglu graduating to MotoGP has been making headlines throughout the summer. His current BMW contract expires at the end of next season, so he would be free to move up to racing’s premier class in 2026.

Would he be able to beat Marc Márquez, reigning MotoGP king Pecco Bagnaia and the rest?  Quite possibly, yes. His mastery of locking the front tyre and maintaining control could also be a winner in MotoGP, where recent technological changes have made front-tyre lock a big issue, with which some riders cope better than others.

On the other hand, changing tyre brands (WSBK uses Pirelli, MotoGP uses Michelin), especially considering the front tyre, can be very tricky for motorcycle racers, because the front tyre is a matter of feeling. And Michelin’s front slick is very different to Pirelli’s, so that will be a big question mark for Razgatlioglu if he does make the switch.

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Mat Oxley has covered motorcycle racing  for many years – and also has the distinction  of being an Isle of Man TT winner
Follow Mat on Twitter @matoxley