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MAX BIAGGI WINS HIS SECOND WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP

• He is the oldest Champion: the record belonged to Troy Bayliss, who won at 39 years 7 months and 3 days in 2008. Now Max puts the bar at 41 years 3 months and 11 days;
• For the fourteenth time in history the winner of the opening race wins the title;
• Max won with the smallest margin ever recorded: 0.5 points. In the past, in 2007, James Toseland won with only two points over Haga;
• The 358 points of Max are the lowest score for a champion since 2004, when Toseland won with only 336 points, but that year the championship consisted of only 22 races. Max won with an average of 12.7 points per race, the lowest in history since the introduction of the current points system, back in 1995;

The close fight for the championship can be summarized with another fact: Max won only five races out of 28 this year (17%). In the history of World Superbikes, only four times has a lower value been recorded for a champion:

1988 Merkel: 2 wins out of 17 races (11%);
1989 Merkel: 3 wins out of 22 races (13%);
1998 Fogarty: 3 wins out of 24 races (12%);
2004 Toseland: 3 wins out of 22 races (13%);

Max became champion without being the most successful rider in the season (five wins to Melandri's six): it's the seventh time in history that this has happened, the first since 2004, when Toseland won three races and the title, but the most successful winner was Regis Laconi with seven. The most striking case was recorded in 1993, when Scott Russell won the title with five wins to Fogarty's eleven; Fogarty came second that year.

• With his ninth season pole, Tom Sykes recorded the third all-time value for a single season. The record belongs to Ben Spies with eleven poles (2009), followed by Doug Polen with ten (1991). With his thirteenth front-row start of the season, Tom equalled the best all-time value, recorded by Giancarlo Falappa in 1992, Scott Russell in 1993, Troy Bayliss in 2008 and Ben Spies in 2009;
• 30th pole position for Kawasaki, the fourth manufacturer to reach this goal after Ducati (161 poles), Honda (44) and Yamaha (37);
• Tom Sykes led both races: during 2012 he was in the lead in 20 different races, the second all-time value after 22 for Bayliss in 2008;
• Sylvain Guintoli won his third race: a French rider hadn't won his home race since 1990, when Raymond Roche scored the double in Le Mans. Sylvain in race two climbed on the podium for the tenth time;
• Maxime Berger scored his best career result in race one: fourth;
• Tom Sykes in race two scored the 120th win for Great Britain;
• Maiden fastest race lap for Davide Giugliano (race two);
• A dramatic end of the season for Marco Melandri: after taking the lead in the championship at the Russian round, in the following races he fell four times out of five, missing one due to injury. Considering only the last three race weekends, Melandri is only thirteenth in the number of points scored, 20, compared to the 90 scored by Sykes and Laverty;
• Honda finished their second straight season without posting a single fastest race lap: Jonathan Rea came very close to scoring it in the very last race, missing it by only 0.015.

Compiled by Michele Merlino