A MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship race can be decided in less than the blink of an eye. A motorcycle crosses the finish line. A number appears on the timing screen. A sector time changes. A rider's position updates. For the fans watching around the world, it happens almost instantaneously. But behind those numbers is an extraordinary combination of technology, software and human expertise, much of it completely invisible to the spectators in the grandstands and the competitors on track.
For Perugia Timing, which celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2026, keeping track of the world's fastest production-based motorcycles is about far more than starting and stopping a clock. There are wires buried beneath the asphalt, transponders mounted on motorcycles, GPS signals, electronic communication with the bikes, sophisticated software and photo-finish technology capable of scanning the finish line thousands of times every second. And it must all work perfectly.
FROM STOPWATCHES TO COMPUTERS
Perugia Timing's story began in 1946, in the province of Perugia, but the roots of organised sports timekeeping in Italy stretch back even further. In the 1920s, Italy established a national federation for timekeeping across sports where accurate timing was required, creating an environment in which specialists could develop their skills across disciplines ranging from athletics and swimming to horse racing, basketball and volleyball.
Perugia became part of that tradition, with local timekeepers working across the province before the technology of motorsport began to transform the profession. One of the figures who played an important role in Perugia's development was Luigi Burini, who became president of the association and helped pass his knowledge on to the next generation. Today, the organisation bears his name as FICR L. Burini Perugia Timing.
For Giorgio Giordani, Senior Timekeeper and a member of the board of the Perugia Timing Association, the history of racing timekeeping is also a history of reducing the opportunities for human error. He said: "When timing started, everything was manual. You had stopwatches and you needed a lot of people. Everyone had their own reaction time, so it wasn't easy to have an accurate result."
The breakthrough came with the chronoprinter. Introduced into major international sport during the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, the technology established a new approach to timing: rather than relying entirely on people reading and writing stopwatch times, information could be printed and processed in a much more structured way. This was just the beginning, however.
"Even with the chronoprinter, it wasn't easy," said Giordani. "You could have two cars or bikes passing at the same time. You needed people to check the numbers and the times and make sure everything was synchronised."
As computers began to appear, Perugia was among the organisations investing in the technology needed to bring timing into the digital age. The nearby Magione circuit, built in the 1970s, became an important testing ground. With its short 1.6-kilometre layout and lap times of around a minute, it presented an ideal - and challenging - environment in which to develop new systems.
In the 1980s, Perugia began developing its own timing software and hardware, including a special interface created specifically for the organisation by engineer Roberto Lucca. The early computers had tiny amounts of memory and processing power by modern standards.
Giordani recalled: "At the beginning, when the programmers came to the circuit and saw how many people were working, they were scared that the computer wouldn't be able to keep up. It did, and Perugia's development work would soon take the organisation far beyond Italy.”
THE ARRIVAL OF THE TRANSPONDER
The next major revolution came with the transponder. Perugia began developing software specifically for transponder-based timing in the 1980s, at a time when the technology was still in its infancy. The first systems were large and relatively basic, with transponders initially operating only at the finish line rather than providing the sector-by-sector information familiar to today's fans.
The principle behind the transponder was transformative however - instead of requiring people to manually record the passage of every motorcycle, the transponder could identify the machine electronically and send its information directly into the timing system. Perugia was among the first organisations to develop the software and infrastructure needed to make that technology work in motorcycle racing.
"The transponder was a big improvement," said Giordani. "The data was much easier to collect, but it also required new skills. We had to develop the software and the interfaces around it."
The organisation's expertise soon attracted attention from beyond Italy, and Perugia became involved in timing for numerous motorcycle and car championships, while its work on television interfaces allowed live timing information to be integrated into broadcast pictures. The company also worked with the Dutch company AMB - now part of MYLAPS - as transponder technology continued to evolve.
Perugia's expertise eventually extended to multi-sector timing, initially splitting circuits into two sections before progressively developing more sophisticated systems. Then came another milestone when, in 1994, Perugia travelled overseas for the first time to provide timing at the Sentul circuit in Indonesia.
For Giordani, who has been involved with Perugia for decades, the progression from those early systems to today's technology is extraordinary. Yet perhaps the most surprising part of modern timing is that some of its most important components are hidden beneath the track itself.
TECH BENEATH YOUR FEET
Walk around a modern WorldSBK circuit and you'll see thin black lines crossing the asphalt. They're easy to miss, and beneath them is a wire, approximately 1-1.5mm in diameter, installed around two centimetres below the surface. This is the timing loop. When a motorcycle's transponder passes over it, the two systems communicate for an incredibly short period of time. "Two milliseconds," said Giordani. That's all it takes for the system to identify the motorcycle and record its passage.
A typical circuit can have fewer than 20 timing loops, depending on the layout and what the system needs to monitor; they aren't simply used to record lap times. The loops can provide sector times, monitor speed and control pit-lane speeds, while strategically positioned loops can be used to identify motorcycles at specific points around the circuit. At Cremona, for example, the timing infrastructure includes a network of these points around the circuit, connected to decoders and the wider timing system. And the entire system must be synchronised. "Everything is synchronised by GPS," Giordani stated.
That might sound straightforward today, but synchronisation was once one of the biggest challenges in race timing. "If one clock wasn't synchronised, you could lose all the data," he said. "If someone forgot to synchronise the clocks, it could be a disaster."
And there is another important detail: despite all the wireless technology surrounding modern motorsport, the core timing infrastructure remains wired. Fibre, network cable and copper connections still form the backbone of the system around the circuit.
SEVEN PEOPLE, HUNDREDS OF POSSIBILITIES
It takes surprisingly few people to operate this complex system. At a WorldSBK event, the Perugia team begins arriving at the circuit as early as Tuesday to start installing the equipment. Three people handle the initial installation, with further personnel arriving on Wednesday to help complete the work and begin testing. By the time everything is operational, the WorldSBK timing operation can be managed by a team of around seven people. Before a motorcycle ever takes to the circuit, the team has already spent days ensuring the system is working correctly.
At Cremona, by the time racing began, the entire network had been tested, and the equipment isn't limited to the timing loops. Perugia also uses RaceLink devices and a wireless network around the circuit, allowing its team to remain connected wherever they are working. The result is a system that can collect an enormous amount of information from every motorcycle.
THE MOTORCYCLE TALKS BACK
Modern WorldSBK motorcycles are no longer simply carrying a device that tells the timing system when they have crossed a line. The equipment demonstrated by Giordani during our visit can communicate with the motorcycle's electronic control unit, and depending on the motorcycle and its electronics, this can allow information such as temperatures and other technical parameters to be monitored by the technical officials.
"Everything is managed by the technical marshals," Giordani explained. “They can monitor the parameters controlled by the ECU." The potential safety benefits are significant. If, for example, a temperature begins to rise unexpectedly, the information could provide an early warning that a mechanical problem is developing. "Maybe the engine is about to break," Giordani continued. "They can stop the rider before it happens."
There is, however, a complication. WorldSBK features motorcycles from different manufacturers, using different electronic systems and configurations. That means the data available from one motorcycle isn't necessarily directly comparable with the information coming from another. "We have different kinds of bikes and different kinds of electronics," said Giordani. "Sometimes the data isn't comparable between the bikes." For the technical officials, understanding those differences is another part of the job.
WHERE IS EVERYBODY?
GPS has transformed another fundamental part of race timing; knowing where every rider is. Before GPS, a motorcycle's position between two timing loops was effectively estimated. "We moved the riders between the loops," Giordani explained. If a motorcycle passed one timing point but hadn't yet reached the next, the system could only assume where it was. "Now we have GPS position."
Perugia receives the position of each rider and records it throughout the race. That means that if a rider slows dramatically or stops, the system can identify the change and highlight the motorcycle on the monitoring screen. But the real power of the system comes after the moment has passed. Because the information is recorded, officials can replay the movements of the riders and analyse what happened at a particular point on the circuit.
"They can select a range of time and, for example, a corner, and see the sequence and the passing of all the riders and their positions," said Giordani. It effectively gives race officials the ability to reconstruct what happened on track. There are limits, however.
GPS is not currently accurate enough in WorldSBK to determine every track-limits infringement by itself, and those decisions still rely on cameras. Giordani says the next generation of GPS technology can achieve centimetre-level accuracy, potentially opening further possibilities in the future, and more accurate and encompassing decisions on track limits.
THE ULTIMATE TEST: WHO CROSSED THE LINE FIRST?
For all the sophistication of modern GPS and data systems, there remains one question that timing must answer above everything else. Who won? When two riders cross the finish line almost together, the human eye simply can’t make the distinction. That's where Perugia's photo-finish camera comes in. Giordani describes it as one of the special pieces of equipment used by the organisation, and one that has a history stretching back much further than motorcycle racing.
Early photo-finish systems used photographic film running through a narrow slot at the finish line. "The tape had to run at the same speed as the vehicles," Giordani explains. That was workable for athletics and horse racing, but considerably more complicated when dealing with motorcycles travelling at hundreds of kilometres per hour. Electronics would soon help find a solution to this problem.
Today's system uses a vertical Lynx sensor positioned directly on the finish line, continuously scanning everything that passes through it. Perugia's current Lynx equipment can perform a staggering 20,000 scans per second; the next generation can reach around 40,000.
Interestingly, Giordani says the attraction isn't simply the higher number. “The sensor is more sensitive," he explained. "So, we have a good response with low light." That becomes particularly useful when racing takes place at night, such as in Qatar. The technology therefore isn't simply about settling incredibly close finishes, it also gives a detailed visual record of what is happening at the finish line. In a sport where a victory can be decided by a few thousandths of a second, the significance is huge.
TWO THOUSANDTHS OF A SECOND
Sometimes, timing isn't about telling us who is fastest. It's about telling us who got there first. This photograph is one of the examples Giorgio Giordani uses to demonstrate just how fine the margins can be in motorcycle racing.
At the 2006 World Superbike round in Qatar, Noriyuki Haga and James Toseland crossed the finish line virtually together, with Perugia's photo-finish system recording a difference of just two thousandths of a second. The official race classification recorded Haga third and Toseland fourth, with a listed margin of 0.001 seconds, illustrating just how finely the result had to be measured.
It wasn't a battle for victory, but it demonstrates something arguably more important for a timing company: the system must distinguish between motorcycles separated by fractions of a thousandth, wherever they finish in the field.
WHEN THOUSANDTHS DECIDE THE RESULT
The Haga/Toseland finish in Qatar is a striking example. The two riders crossed the line just 0.002 seconds apart, close enough that the difference is almost impossible to comprehend by eye. This isn't an isolated example either.
WorldSBK has produced several extraordinarily close finishes over the years. In the examples shown here, Nicolo Bulega beat Toprak Razgatlioglu by just 0.003 seconds to win the 2024 Estoril Superpole Race, while Leon Haslam finished just 0.004 seconds ahead of Michel Fabrizio at Phillip Island in 2010.
Other remarkably close finishes include:
- 0.005s: John Kocinski / Aaron Slight, Monza Race 1, 1997
- 0.007s: James Toseland / Troy Bayliss, Assen Race 2, 2007
- 0.009s: Noriyuki Haga / Max Neukirchner, Monza Race 2, 2008
- 0.010s: Giancarlo Falappa / Doug Polen, Manfeild Race 2, 1992
At those margins, there is no meaningful way for the human eye to determine the winner. The technology must do it, and it must work.
EIGHTY YEARS AND COUNTING
From stopwatches and handwritten numbers to GPS, transponders and cameras capable of scanning the finish line 20,000 times every second, the technology behind sports timing has changed almost beyond recognition. The fundamental challenge of getting the numbers right has not, however.
For Perugia Timing, 80 years of experience has been built around doing exactly that. The next time a WorldSBK rider crosses the finish line, and a lap time appears on the timing screen, it might be easy to think of the number as simply another piece of information. But beneath the motorcycle is a transponder; beneath the asphalt is a wire; around the circuit is a network of sensors and communication systems, GPS is tracking every rider.
Technical officials are monitoring the information. And somewhere at the finish line, a camera is scanning the action thousands of times every second. All of it is there to answer a question that sounds simple: who got there first?
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