In the early seventies, the glorious tradition of MV Agusta was coming to an end. The commercial success of the Japanese motorcycle industry allowed their factory teams to outspend the small MV atelier, which was a hobby of the four sons of Countess Guiseppina Agusta, whose real business was airplane and helicopter manufacture.

Ducati by now was a well-known competitor in Italy in smaller displacement classes with its classic bevel-drive, overhead camshaft singles. The performance and styling of these jewel-like machines had begun to build a cult following for Ducati overseas. That following would explode almost overnight as Ducati leapt to the forefront of the superbikes that were coming into vogue in the early seventies. A single victory would established the foundation on which Ducati built a record that would continue the tradition of Italy and MV Agusta's international motorcycle racing successes.

The story began when the American Motorcycle Association created a Formula 750 for production-based bikes in 1970 and it was successful enough that European promoters began considering it. On April 23 1972, the Moto Club Santurno organized a F750 race, a 200 Mile event at the Circuit Dino Ferrari in Imola. This race would become the precursor to today's World Superbike Championship.

With a prize fund over $35,000, the largest in Europe at the time, the race attracted works teams from MV Agusta, Triumph, Norton, Moto Guzzi and Laverda. Ducati appeared with two of their new 750 cc, 90-degree, V-twins with desmodromic valves. These hastily prepared bikes had frames lugs for a center stand revealing their road lineage. The bottom end of the engines was stock; only the heads had been worked on. Despite these handicaps, an English club racer, Paul Smart and his Italian teammate, Bruno Spaggiari led the entire 200 Miles. The Italians kept the lid on their boys until the last two laps and then signaled that they could race for it. From that point on the two Ducatis were side by side with Smart taking the win after Spaggiari dropped to second with fuel pickup problems. That double victory established the beginnings of the legend of the Ducati V-twin and its distinctive throaty exhaust note. As word of the Imola triumph spread, the machines from Bologna immediately became the new darlings of café racers around the world. Later in the decade, the mystique was enlarged when Americans Cook Neilson and Phil Schilling, who were working at Cycle Magazine, hopped up a 750 SS with 450 single barrels, multi-make motorcycle and car parts and, with Neilson riding, won the Production Superbike race at Daytona in 1977. The next year, after not racing bikes for years, Mike Hailwood won the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy with a 900cc Ducati Super Sport. Since then Ducati has gone from strength to strength and when the World Superbike Championship was introduced in 1988, they became its mainstay. In the fourteen years the Championship has been in existence, Ducati has won it ten times, posting more race wins than all other marques combined.