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Le Mans 24 Hours Endurance World Championship

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Any in racing series, defending the #1 plate is no easy feat, and when it comes to motorcycle racing, this statement is the most true in the FIM Endurance World Championship.

Composed of only four races for the 2016 season, the endurance championship still requires 52 hours of racing, and many more hours of practice and qualifying leading up to that figure.

To put that in perspective, it is roughly three-times more racing that MotoGP does in a season, and twice as much racing than what occurs in the World Superbike Championship.

All that extra racing time means there are more opportunity for where things can go wrong, and with only four opportunities to score points, it makes reliability, teamwork, and racecraft all the more important.

It is also worth mentioning the FIM Endurance World Championship is the only racing series where a tire war still exists, and it is also a battlefield where four factory-backed manufacturers can win at any particular event.

With all that considered then, we must give a well-earned congratulations to the Suzuki Endurance Racing Team (SERT), along with its riders Vincent Philippe, Anthony Delhalle, and Etienne Masson, for winning the 2016 FIM Endurance World Championship.

Taking things all the way to the last round of the championship – the Bol d’Or 24 Hour race – the Suzuki Endurance Racing Team can finally lay claim to being the the 2015 FIM Endurance World Champions.

Though endurance racing is very much a team effort, this victory for SERT couldn’t have been achieved without the team’s EWC veteran riders: Vincent Philippe, Anthony Delhalle, and Etienne Masson.

The trio’s results have allowed Suzuki to claim its 14th EWC title, which is just one part of the Japanese brand’s domination in the FIM Endurance World Championship.

On its road to EWC glory, SERT won at Le Mans, finished fourth in the very competitive specialist field at Suzuka, landed second on the podium at Oschersleben, and wrapped up the Bol d’Or in the third position.

This weekend France played host to the FIM’s first round of the e-Power Championship, which took place in Le Mans. Starting before the Le Mans 24 Hours Endurance World Championship race, only five riders took to the starting line, with Belgian rider de Ridder not making it to venue. Taking the first win in the FIM’s first zero-emission motorcycle race was Thomas Betti, the son in the father-son duo of Betti Moto.