Fogarty's competition career began in the mid-1980s. He won the 1985 Lightweight Newcomers event at the Manx Grand Prix and went on to make 26 Isle of Man TT starts, winning three: the 1989 production 750 race, followed by the Formula 1 and Senior events in 1990. In 1992 he set a lap record of 18 minutes, 18.8 seconds (123.61 mph) on a Yamaha 750 cc; that record stood for seven years until Jim Moodie broke it from a standing start on a Honda RC45 in 1999, raising it to 124.45 mph.
During the same period Fogarty won the Formula One World Championship for bikes three times, from 1988 to 1990. The series was fading after the 1988 commencement of the World Superbike Championship; in 1990 it fell below the six races required for the FIM to classify it as a full championship, yet Fogarty took the title regardless.
He won the Ulster Grand Prix F1 race in 1988, then the senior race in 1989 with a new lap record at 121.629 mph. In 1993 he won both superbike races at the North West 200 on a Moto Cinelli Ducati 888, beating the Dunlop brothers in race one (Robert Dunlop second, Joey Dunlop third) and Robert Dunlop again in race two ahead of Phillip McCallen, setting a lap record of 122.491 mph.
Fogarty entered WSBK full-time in 1991 with Neil Tuxworth's Honda UK team, finishing seventh overall. After the team withdrew for 1992, Fogarty competed in a partial season and took his first WSBK win at Donington Park, finishing ninth overall.
The 1993 season marked the start of his factory Ducati career. He won 11 races to title rival Scott Russell's five, but Russell secured the championship through superior consistency — Russell finished second twelve times to Fogarty's two — and Fogarty ended the year second.
In 1994, riding the new Ducati 916, Fogarty missed the Hockenheim races with a broken wrist but fought back to beat Russell and Aaron Slight for the title. He won the 1995 championship with even greater dominance, winning six of the first eight races and sealing the title with five of the 24 rounds still to run.
For 1996 Fogarty returned to Tuxworth's squad, now with Honda factory support, riding the Honda RC45. He won four races — three more than team-mate Slight and one more than Slight had managed over three seasons on the bike — but finished fourth overall, 38 points behind champion Troy Corser and 16 behind second-placed Slight. He returned to Ducati in 1997 and finished runner-up to John Kocinski.
The 1998 season was his closest title fight. After a disappointing round at the Nürburgring left him sixth in the standings, he overturned Corser and Slight in the final round to take the championship. Notably, his team — Ducati Performance, managed by Davide Tardozzi — was in its first year of WSBK competition. Fogarty took his fourth and final title in 1999, clinching it with three races remaining.
He had his first victory at Brands Hatch only in 1995, but was dominant at Assen, winning all but one race there between 1995 and 1999.
Fogarty made several starts in MotoGP, filling in for Pierfrancesco Chili on an ROC bike in 1990 with a best finish of sixth at the Swedish Grand Prix. At the 1992 500cc British Grand Prix he ran sixth before crashing on oil; at the 1993 edition he qualified on the second row and ran second early on after Alex Barros, Mick Doohan, and Kevin Schwantz crashed on the first lap. He was on course for third when he ran out of fuel, coasting to fourth behind three Yamahas. He was entered in 1994 but withdrew pre-race, citing a hand injury and later admitting the ride was uncompetitive.
In 1992 Fogarty teamed with Terry Rymer and Michael Simul to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans and took the FIM Endurance World Championship for Kawasaki. Other endurance wins included the Bol d'Or. In 1992 he rode a Harris Yamaha 500 GP bike to victory in the Macau Grand Prix. At the 1995 Daytona 200 he finished second riding for Ducati; Russell crashed on the first lap, remounted, and passed Fogarty for the win after pace-car regrouping under yellow closed the gap.
Including the FIM Endurance title alongside his four World Superbike championships, Fogarty holds an aggregate of five world championship titles.
Fogarty was forced to retire in 2000 following a crash at Phillip Island in which he hit privateer Ducati rider Robert Ulm. He suffered multiple injuries, most critically a shoulder injury that never healed well enough to allow him to race again. He was replaced in the factory Ducati team by Troy Bayliss.
In 2002, Ducati released the Monster S4 Fogarty, a limited-edition model of 300 units built in his honour. The same year, Fogarty founded the Foggy Petronas team in WSBK. The team entered with Corser and James Haydon in 2003, but the three-cylinder Petronas FP1 was never truly competitive. Two third-place finishes — one for Corser, one for Chris Walker — were achieved in 2004. After several manufacturers returned for 2005 the team lost competitiveness; Petronas ended the project at the close of 2006. A planned return in 2008 as the official MV Agusta team was ultimately cancelled and the team's assets were sold.
Fogarty won the fourteenth series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in 2014. He has published two books: Foggy: The Explosive Autobiography (2001) and The World According To Foggy (2018). He received an Honorary Fellowship from the University of Central Lancashire in July 2016. He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1998 New Year Honours.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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