Toni Elías
Toni Elías enjoyed a long grand prix motorcycle racing career spanning 125cc, 250cc, MotoGP, and Moto2, winning a MotoGP race by the narrowest margin ever recorded before later becoming a Moto2 world champion.
Toni Elías built a long, varied grand prix motorcycle racing career that began in the smaller 125cc and 250cc classes in Spain's strong rider pipeline, before graduating to the premier MotoGP class in the mid-2000s.
His defining MotoGP moment came at the 2006 Portuguese Grand Prix, where he beat Valentino Rossi to the finish line by a margin so narrow — 0.002 seconds — that it remains one of the closest finishes ever recorded in the class, still shown as a reference point whenever an exceptionally tight finish happens today.
Elías later moved into the Moto2 class, winning the 2010 world championship there, and went on to race competitively for years afterward, including a late-career move to the United States to compete in MotoAmerica — a rare case of a grand prix winner finding a genuinely successful second act in American road racing.
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At the 2006 Portuguese Grand Prix, Elías beat Valentino Rossi to the line by a margin so small it was recorded as 0.002 seconds — still regarded as one of the closest finishes in MotoGP history, decided essentially by a photo finish at racing speeds.
Elías won races in the 125cc and 250cc classes before eventually winning races in MotoGP, and later became Moto2 world champion in 2010 — a genuinely rare spread of success across the sport's different categories over the course of a long career.
Elías raced at a professional level for an unusually long span, continuing to compete into his late thirties — a career length that significantly exceeds the typical span for a grand prix motorcycle racer given the physical demands of the sport.
In the later stages of his career, Elías moved to compete in MotoAmerica, the premier US-based motorcycle road racing championship, taking his grand prix-honed racecraft to a new audience and series after decades competing in Europe.