The 2026 FIM EWC Champions are the Bridgestone-supported BMW Motorrad World Endurance Team, who claimed the title on September 20 at the Bol d’Or, the season finale at Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet, France. The Belgian-based team won on the same circuit that ended their title bid twelve months earlier.
It’s BMW’s first-ever FIM EWC World Championship, and the sixth straight year — seventh time overall — a Bridgestone-equipped team has taken the title. Riders Markus Reiterberger, Steven Odendaal, Michael van der Mark and Jẽrẽmy Guarnoni shared the #37 BMW M 1000 RR through a 24-hour race that came down to the final lap. Four riders trade a single bike through the night and into the next afternoon, and fatigue and pit strategy end up deciding as much as raw pace.
That run stretches back nearly a decade, tracking to when Bridgestone’s involvement in the series began. Different riders, different teams, different manufacturers’ bikes — the same brand of rubber underneath them, year after year.
The 2026 FIM EWC Champions Complete a Redemption Story at Bol d’Or
A year earlier, at that same circuit, the team was less than 30 minutes from the championship when a mechanical failure ended the run. Coming back to Paul Ricard and finishing the job, rather than winning it somewhere new, gives this title a different weight.
Behind them, YART Yamaha Official EWC Team took second on the #1 Yamaha YZF-R1, with Yoshimura Sert Motul rounding out the podium in third aboard a Suzuki GSX-R1000R. Kawasaki Webike Trickstar and Autorace Ube Racing Team, also on a BMW M 1000 RR, filled out fourth and fifth.
BMW has raced in EWC for years without a title, so this breakthrough carries weight for the manufacturer as much as the team. A first championship, won on the exact circuit where the previous attempt fell apart, is the kind of story endurance racing produces more than any other class in motorcycling.
The 2026 FIM EWC Champions Cap Bridgestone’s Run of Dominance
All five of the top finishers raced on Bridgestone tires, a sweep that says as much about the tire as it does about any single team. Bridgestone has outfitted EWC competitors with BATTLAX race tires since 2017 and served as exclusive supplier for 19 EWC teams this season.
“Reliable tires are a non-negotiable foundation for pushing the absolute limit,” said Nico Thuy, Director Motorcycle at Bridgestone EMEA. The FIM EWC runs non-stop eight- to 24-hour stretches, and a tire that holds its line through shifting track temperatures and changing weather is what separates a podium finish from a mechanical retirement.
What gets a tire through that kind of race is the compound holding grip as the track heats and cools, and the carcass staying stable enough that a rider trusts the same line on hour twenty as hour two. That’s the difference between five teams, on bikes from four manufacturers, finishing inside the top five on the same rubber.
SBI has covered Bridgestone’s endurance racing programs before, and the throughline holds: what gets proven at Le Castellet over 24 hours ends up in the street tires Bridgestone sells everywhere else, under what the company calls its “Circuit to Street” approach.
That’s really the point of a result like this one. A championship at the Bol d’Or reads as a single day’s headline, but the tire compound that survived it keeps working long after the podium celebration ends, on every rider who buys a set for the street.
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