2023 FIM Endurance Team World Champion
GOING THE DISTANCE!
With four races resulting in a mammoth eighty hours of racing, the FIM Endurance Team World Championship (ETWC) is a truly unique series that pushes riders and machines to the absolute limit.
Founded in 2001 by Mandy Kainz, the Yamaha Austria Racing Team (YART) have won many races and made many more podium appearances, although after winning a first ETWC crown in 2009 they had to wait until 2023 to add a second title in this incredibly competitive discipline.
Teamwork is vital when you are racing around the clock and YART’s victorious line-up of Niccolò Canepa, Marvin Fritz and Karel Hanika have been together since the 2019/20 season, helping to form a strong bond that held firm during a tense season.
Getting under way with the fabled 24 Heures Motos at the Circuit Bugatti at Le Mans, France, in the middle of April, armed with Yamaha’s potent R1 machine YART matched their 2022 performance with a rock-solid second-placed finish behind defending champions FCC TSR Honda France.
Following a two-month wait the action then switched to Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps for the 24H Spa EWC Motos and YART powered to victory in Belgium to move ahead of the reigning champions into a super-slim series lead, but as the series passed the halfway point in Japan in early August the team faced their biggest test of the year.
The Coca-Cola Suzuka 8 Hours Endurance Race is the shortest event on the calendar which means less time to overcome problems and an electrical issue early in the race put YART on the back foot which left them in fourteenth.
Regrouping in the middle of September for the Bol d’Or at the Circuit Paul Ricard in France, the YART trio held their nerve and fourth was good enough for them to comfortably clinch the crown.
PALMARES
FIM Endurance Team World Champions: 2009, 2023