Jason O’Halloran capped a dramatic, rain-soaked finale at the Bol D’Or by guiding Yamaha to the 2025 FIM World Endurance Championship crown in the closest title fight in the event’s history
Jason O’Halloran rode the last stint as the official Yamaha team won the 2025 FIM World Endurance Championship at the Bol D’Or in France by one point, the closest in the event’s history.
The win also gave Yamaha the Manufacturer’s title for the second year in a row.
YART entered the finale at the Circuit Paul Ricard with a one-point lead over BMW but after qualifying both teams were on equal points, meaning a winner-takes-all fight lay ahead.
After two hours the Yamaha team of O’Halloran, Marvin Fritz and Karel Hanika was holding a 40-second advantage over BMW. However, a persistent loose fairing that cost extra time during three pit stops dropped them back to fourth.
However, they never gave up and were back to third at the eight-hour mark.
The race then developed into a nail-biting battle for the title with YART knowing it needed to finish second and ahead of BMW to take the crown.
All three riders were suffering from a severe stomach bug and at dawn Hanika was so ill that O’Halloran and Fritz went back-to-back for three hours to let him regain some strength.
As the hours ticked by, BMW maintained its advantage over YART with the Yoshimura Suzuki team leading.
Then, with just 30 minutes remaining, everything changed. The BMW’s engine started smoking and blew up, meaning YART just had to finish to win the title.
With 20 minutes to run, O’Halloran went out but the team’s nerves were on edge as rain started to fall, making conditions tricky.
But O’Halloran stayed safe on a course he’d never ridden before and brought the Yamaha home for its third EWC title, adding to the ones taken in 2009 and 2023.
It made Fritz and Hanika double EWC champions, with O’Halloran grabbing his first world title on debut.
“It’s been an amazing season,” he said. “We won at Le Mans, then led at Spa before my crash, but we fought back to the podium. Obviously we had our issues at Suzuka and didn’t finish the race, which meant it all came down to here. It was my first time riding at Circuit Paul Ricard. I literally only completed my first laps in Private Practice on Tuesday, so I didn’t know what to expect. We worked through the 24-hour race as you do and never gave up.”
O’Halloran also gave BMW credit for its huge effort: “You never ever want to see your competitors go out the way they did. BMW made a fantastic race and they also deserved to be standing here today.”
