Troy Bayliss had entered the Superbike World Championship in 2000 as a mid-season replacement for the injured Carl Fogarty at the factory Ducati team. Despite missing the first three rounds that year, Bayliss impressed with two race victories and finished sixth overall in the standings. His potential was clear, and 2001 would be his first full season as a factory Ducati rider in the championship.
The 2001 campaign also featured reigning champion Colin Edwards on the Honda VTR1000 SPW, the bike that had delivered Edwards his title in 2000. The contest between Bayliss on the Ducati V-twin and Edwards aboard the Honda became the defining rivalry of the season.
Bayliss opened 2001 with a string of consistent results, accumulating four second-place finishes in his first five races. His first race victory of the season came in race 8 at Monza, and from that point he built steadily on his championship lead. Six race wins across the season gave Bayliss the consistency and margin he needed to hold off Edwards.
The championship was effectively decided at the penultimate meeting at Assen, where Edwards suffered a mechanical failure that prevented him from scoring points. That misfortune handed Bayliss the title before the Imola finale even took place. However, the Imola finale proved costly for Bayliss personally: he crashed in the first race and sustained a broken collarbone, ending his active participation in the final round without scoring any points.
The Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari at Imola served as the closing chapter of the 2001 championship, a venue that would become particularly associated with WorldSBK drama in subsequent seasons. For 2001, the title had already been secured at Assen, but Imola represented the symbolic closing of Bayliss's debut championship season — one marred at the final hurdle by his crash and injury.
The circuit's stop-start configuration and relatively tight complex of corners made it a technically demanding final test, and the Italian setting provided an appropriate home-ground atmosphere for the factory Ducati squad.
Troy Bayliss's 2001 championship was the beginning of a remarkable WorldSBK career spanning multiple eras. He would go on to win two further Superbike World titles in 2006 and 2008, accumulating 52 race victories across his career — fourth all time in the history of the championship behind Jonathan Rea, Álvaro Bautista, and Carl Fogarty.
The 2001 season was also significant in demonstrating the enduring competitiveness of Ducati's V-twin formula against the Honda four-cylinder challenger. Edwards would reclaim the title in 2002 in one of the most dramatic season-long battles in the championship's history, but 2001 established Bayliss as one of the defining riders of the early 2000s WorldSBK era.
Ducati won the manufacturers' championship to complement Bayliss's riders' title, continuing the Italian manufacturer's dominance that had characterized WorldSBK through the 1990s.