Fabrizio Pirovano

When the Superbike World Championship began in 1988, he was one of its first entrants, finishing as championship runner-up in 1988 and 1990, and in the top five four other times. He won 10 races and took 37 further podium finishes. He is in the championship's all-time top 10 for starts, points and podiums.[1][2] Curiously he never took a World Superbike pole position. He won the Italian Superbike title four times.[3]

By the mid-1990s, the World Superbike championship had more international stars (such as Troy Corser and Carl Fogarty) and Pirovano was less competitive. In 1995, a second-place finish at the season-opener at Hockenheim was his only podium, and he left the championship at the end of the year. He moved to the Open Championship for 1996, winning several races[4] and remained there as it became the Supersport World Championship in 1997. He was champion with five wins in 1998, and finished in the top 10 in the four other seasons he contested. In 2001 his best results were a pair of 5th places,[5] and this proved to be his last full season. He won a one-off race in the Suzuki GSX-R Cup at the Misano Circuit in June 2006. He died after losing a battle against an incurable tumour on 12 June 2016.[6]