Sidecar racing was part of the FIM Grand Prix World Championship from its inaugural 1949 season. Early machines were essentially road-going sidecar outfits stripped back for competition — structures that were later described as "scaffolding on wheels," with poor rigidity and limited understanding of aerodynamics. Pioneers like Eric Oliver worked with companies such as Watsonian to develop streamlined fairings and to reduce weight, lowering seat heights until drivers sat in a semi-prone position. By 1953, a one-piece enclosure that covered both the driver and the sidecar platform had been tested at the Belgian Grand Prix and at Monza, though the unfamiliar handling characteristics limited its immediate adoption.
For the championship's first three decades the basic format of the outfit — a motorcycle with an attached sidecar — remained recognisable, even as engineering progressively merged the sidecar subframe with the motorcycle mainframe into a single structure.
A turning point arrived in 1977 when George O'Dell won the championship aboard a hub-centre steering sidecar — the Seymaz, built by Rolf Biland — that challenged assumptions about how a sidecar outfit should be constructed. The following year Biland won the 1978 title on a BEO-Yamaha TZ500 sidecar that functioned essentially as a rear-engine, rear-drive trike.
The FIM responded in 1979 by splitting the class into two competitions: B2A for traditional sidecars and B2B for prototypes. The B2B class spawned machines with driver's seats, steering wheels and foot pedals rather than motorcycle handlebars, relegating the passenger to a largely static role. In 1980, concerned that the designs were ceasing to resemble motorcycles and making passengers non-active participants, the FIM banned all sidecar prototypes. One year later, after protests from teams, the ban was reversed on the condition that prototypes must be driven by a single rear wheel, steered by a single front wheel via a motorcycle handlebar, and must require active participation from the passenger.
Those 1981 rules formed the foundation that governs the championship to the present day, with modest amendments including the eventual permission of automobile-style wishbone suspension configurations for the sidecar front wheel.
Between 1981 and 2016 the leading class of sidecar was known as the Formula One sidecar, a purpose-built machine whose chassis owed more to open-wheel car racing than to motorcycles, using wide flat-profile tyres and sometimes referred to informally as "worms." The traditional Formula Two sidecar — using 600cc engines and retaining better manoeuvrability — remained popular in the United Kingdom and at true road racing events such as the Isle of Man TT.
The most successful driver in the Superside era was Steve Webster, who claimed four world championships and six world cups between 1987 and 2004. The most successful chassis manufacturer was the Swiss constructor LCR, founded by Louis Christen, whose creations won 35 championships between 1979 and 2016 with a range of engine partners including Yamaha, Krauser and Suzuki. The BMW Rennsport RS54 engine powered the championship to 19 straight constructors titles between 1955 and 1973.
In 2014, Tim Reeves and Gregory Cluze won the title on a Kawasaki-powered machine, ending an eleven-year consecutive run of Suzuki-powered victories. In 2016, Kirsi Kainulainen became the first woman to be crowned a motorcycle world champion when she took the title as passenger to Pekka Paivarinta.
For 2017 the FIM reduced engine capacity from 1000cc to 600cc in an effort to attract more participants and reduce the performance gap between the Formula One and Formula Two chassis. The rule change was designed to level competition, though the 2017 season remained dominated by the more advanced F1-type machines.
Under FIM regulations the term "rider" applies equally to driver and passenger in a sidecar. The driver operates kneeling in front of the engine with hands near the front wheel. The passenger moves dynamically across the rear platform, transferring body weight left and right through corners and forward and backward to manage front and rear traction. The passenger is also often the first crew member to detect mechanical problems, positioned immediately alongside the engine. The partnership between the two requires constant communication and coordination. In North America the passenger was historically called the Acrobat; the now-universal term is "Monkey," a word that originated in Australia.
Since 2005 championship rounds have incorporated up to three race formats: the Match Race, which groups teams into heats with the best advancing through semi-finals to a six-team final; the Sprint Race, a short event open to all teams typically run over twelve laps; and the Gold Race, the main event at roughly twice the Sprint distance. When a round serves as a support event to a major meeting such as MotoGP, organisers may run only the Gold Race.