Pirovano was among the original entrants when the Superbike World Championship launched in 1988, bringing the credibility of an established Italian road racer to the new series. In that inaugural season he finished as championship runner-up, an immediate statement of his class. He was runner-up again in 1990, and placed in the top five on four further occasions, making him one of the most consistent performers across the championship's formative years.
During his WorldSBK career Pirovano won 10 races and stood on the podium 37 additional times, placing him in the all-time top ten for championship starts, points, and podiums. A notable statistical curiosity is that despite this extraordinary consistency, he never once claimed a pole position in the Superbike World Championship — a fact that sets him apart from other riders with comparable career records in the series. He also won the Italian Superbike title four times, underlining his dominance in domestic competition.
By the mid-1990s the championship had attracted a new wave of international stars, among them Carl Fogarty and Troy Corser, and Pirovano found himself less able to challenge for race wins. In 1995, a second-place finish at the Hockenheim season-opener was his sole podium of the year, and he departed the WorldSBK class at the end of that season.
Pirovano moved to the Open Championship — the forerunner of the Supersport World Championship — for 1996 and was immediately competitive, winning several races. When the series was formalised as the Supersport World Championship in 1997 he continued at the front of the field, and in 1998 he took the title with five victories. He remained in the championship for four further seasons, consistently finishing in the top ten, with his last full season of competition coming in 2001, when a pair of fifth-place results proved to be among his final competitive appearances.
He made one further race start, winning a one-off race in the Suzuki GSX-R Cup at the Misano Circuit in June 2006 — more than two decades after his career began.
Pirovano died on 12 June 2016 after losing a battle against an incurable tumour. He was 56 years old.
Pirovano's career spanned the full arc of the Superbike World Championship's early development, from its inaugural race in 1988 to the point at which it had grown into one of the world's premier road racing series. His position in the all-time top ten for starts, points, and podiums, combined with his Supersport World Championship title, make him one of the most decorated Italian production-based racers of his generation. The curiosity of his career — 10 WorldSBK wins and 37 further podiums but zero pole positions — gave his record a uniqueness that distinguished it from any other front-runner of the era.