The final event of this year’s FIM EWC Endurance World Championship was held in Le Castellet, France. The Slovak team Maco Racing was also present, concluding its 23rd full season in the world championship.
The team’s goal was to win as many points as possible in the series standings, as after the unlucky races in Le Mans and Spa they were in 16th place. However, from the beginning the team had to fight with health problems, which were not avoided by the drivers either. Christoffer Bergman (Sweden) was struggling with an illness and Daniel Gonzales (Spain) could not even race at all due to big back problems. He was replaced in the team by the excellent young Hungarian rider Máté Számadó, who had recently won the championship title in the international Alpe Adria championship. The third rider of the team was again the American Michael Gilbert. Reserve rider was Czech rider Martin Vašulin.Despite the aforementioned difficulties, the team was finally able to present itself in an excellent light, winning 13 th place overall and 5 th in the EWC class, which earned it 14th place in the final championship standings after 2025 season.
Martin Kuzma, team owner:
“Before we left from BRATTISLVA, two team members /mechanics/ had health problems and couldn’t travel with us.It doesn’t matter, I changed the front wheel after years, like in past as a young man. But that was just the beginning, after arriving at the place we found out that Chris Bergman and team coordinator Adam were also sick. Since it was only Monday, we hoped that they would get together. But then Daniel Gonzales also arrived, he has a back problem and can’t ride. I had to start looking for a new rider. I managed to do that, we made an agreement with the Hungarian rider Máté Számadó, who was also there. But the suffering continued, Chris could barely stand on his feet before the first qualification and went down halfway, saying that he couldn’t go any further. The important thing at that moment was that he was already qualified for the upcoming race. I had already planned a strategy for the race and at the next meeting with the riders I said that we were either finishing and going home, or we were going to continue. They decided to continue and respect the plan I had prepared. Each rider had a set amount of time and number of laps to do during the day and night stint. Máté started the race, everything went according to plan, the pit stops were working out at one hundred percent, the plan was just to fight for points in our EWC category. The bike worked without a single problem and at about three o clock in the morning it accelerated a little as planned and Máté and Michael went 2 times for a double stint. We were moving up, but there was a crash on the oil from another bike, after repairs we continued and in the end we won thirteenth place overall and fifth in the EWC class. After the mentioned health problems, we were finally able to get the most out of it, and that is how I evaluate it. The credit for that goes to ours whole team, all team members who did not give up and worked at one hundred percent, Thank you very much. As well, my big thank you to all our partners and fans, who still support us and cheer us on.”
