How does Razgatlıoğlu's record WorldSBK win streak stack up?

Before we get into that, if you didn't see the weekend's racing action, it's worth watching the highlights of the Sunday full-length race. You can see Razgatlıoğlu's left wing flying off at the 1:10 mark of the video below after contact with Alex Lowes. Despite his asymmetrical ROKiT BMW M 1000 RR wanting to run wide in some corners, Razgatlıoğlu held off strong challenges from both of the Aruba.it Racing Ducati riders, eventually finishing just 0.035 seconds ahead of Nicolò Bulega to get the 54th career win for number 54.

That puts Razgatlıoğlu a solid 92 points ahead of Bulega with seven rounds run and five remaining. He will try to extend his streak next month in France.

Streaks in perspectives

How does the streak compare to those of the past? Three times before a rider has reeled off 11 WorldSBK victories in a row. The first was in 2018, when Jonathan Rea and his Kawasaki were in the midst of a six-year run of consecutive championships. 2018 was the final year before the Sunday sprint race was added. Is it harder to keep a streak alive with two races per weekend or three? With one race format or two? Do more races increase the chances for a longer streak? Those are questions that could probably be debated endlessly with no satisfactory conclusion, but in any case, Rea did the double at the U.S. round at Laguna Seca (remember when we used to have WorldSBK racing in the United States?) and continued winning right through the end of the season. 

Rea's streak could easily have been longer. In the Czech round, two weeks before the U.S. round, he won race one but crashed out of race two after contact with Tom Sykes. If he had won race two at Brno in the Czech Republic, his streak would have been 13. Also, the final race of the year in Qatar was cancelled due to weather, denying Rea a chance to extend his streak one more race. 

The next year, the first season with Superpole sprint races, Álvaro Bautista arrived from MotoGP to join the Ducati factory team and immediately looked like he was going to put an emphatic end to Rea's championship streak. Bautista won the first 11 races of the year. But just when some fans were ready to hand Bautista the trophy and call off the rest of the season as a foregone conclusion, things started slipping for Bautista while Rea was steadily chipping away with solid finishes. By the end of the season, Rea easily won his fifth straight title.

Bautista racked up another 11-race streak last year, beginning with race two in Indonesia in March and winning until the Superpole race at Donington Park in the U.K. at the beginning of July. Razgatlıoğlu won that Superpole race with Bautista in second. If Bautista had won that Superpole race, he would have recorded 14 straight victories.

How far Razgatlıoğlu can extend his current streak is an open question, but what's not debatable is the level of talent he's bringing to every race this year. Evidence of that is not just his 92-point lead over Bulega (or 142-point lead over third-place Bautista), but also the gap between him and everyone else on a BMW M 1000 RR. The next best rider on a BMW is Razgatlıoğlu's teammate, Michael van der Mark, who is 12th in the standings with approximately one third the number of points Razgatlıoğlu has. Asoundingly, Razgatlıoğlu has 125 more points than the other three BMW riders — van der Mark, Garrett Gerloff, and Scott Redding — combined.

Razgatlıoğlu also reached another statistical milestone at Portimao with his 54th win. That moved him into fourth place on the career wins list, passing Troy Bayliss. Rea dominates the career wins list with 119, nearly double anyone else. Bautista is second with 61 and Carl Fogarty is third with 59. If he continues his dominant ways, Razgatlıoğlu could potentially move up to as high as second on that list this year.

Of course what Razgatlıoğlu wants most right now is a second championship. While he is now fourth on the all-time wins list, there are nine riders with more championships than his lone title in 2021. Razgatlıoğlu also has an interest in trying his hand at MotoGP, and rumors about whether he will or will not get a shot at that other world championship are practically a cottage industry in the sport. There's no easy path for him getting that chance, however, and not much precedent, either. Just try to name a WorldSBK rider who jumped to MotoGP with any lasting success. But then Razgatlıoğlu these days is in the business of doing unprecedented things.