Marvin Fritz will have a triple target on his back when he lines up for the second running of the 8 Hours of Spa Motos this weekend.
The German was part of the Yamalube YART Yamaha EWC Official Team that won the inaugural 8 Hours of Spa Motos last June, when he also set a new lap record of 2m18.551s around the legendary 6.985-kilometre Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.
And the 32-year-old former FIM Endurance World Championship title winner heads to Spa, where also won the 24H SPA EWC Motos in 2023, on the back of claiming victory in the EWC season-opening 24 Heures Motos alongside team-mates Karel Hanika and team newcomer Jason O’Halloran.
Fritz (left) broke the Spa lap record with a stunning charge last June
“Last year we came to Spa with third place at Le Mans after we unfortunately lost the win,” Fritz said. “This year we come there as the winner and for sure it takes away a lot of the pressure. We have good points after the first weekend but, overall, we know in eight-hour races we are very strong, so our mentality is that we are going for the win and the pole position for sure. If the circumstances are different and we get second we take second and the points but the main point is to win this race again. For sure the win [at Le Mans] in our back takes the pressure away because we don’t need to risk 100 per cent, we can do our race like we did in the past, focus on us and do what we can do. Overall, we feel super-confident and we are going there easy with no pressure and normally this is the best way to have a successful weekend.”
YART celebrates winning the 2024 8 Hours of Spa Motos
Of his Spa qualifying heroics of 12 months ago, Fritz said: “When I think about Spa and the fast lap I have goosebumps because the track is something what you don’t have in any other tracks. You have nice tracks like Suzuka, which is also one of my favourites, but Spa… seven kilometres long and the average speed is around 190 so super-fast, especially when you go up the hill and go back down and see all places up there from above. You have one or two seconds to see the places and then you have to focus.
“The place I also love, the little villages around, the style of the houses, the complete place is beautiful. We have a special relationship with the track with the victories from the last two years so the goal is to have a hat-trick this year.”
“But Spa is not easy,” Fritz continued. “Because the track is so long if you make a little mistake in the first corner you need to wait two and a half laps to start again. You have so many fast corners and you need to take every apex perfect, to take the speed out of the corners. The corners are not slow, most of them are really fast. It’s just the last corner and the first corner and maybe after the back straight the right, which is a bit slower, but the rest is all super-fast, third, fourth gear, even two corners in sixth gear before you come back to the start/finish straight. You cannot make any mistake and for this the bike needs to be set up very well for sure. Especially for the race the fuel consumption is very high because the average speed is so high there so you have to set up everything perfect.”
O'Halloran (left) is a YART newcomer for 2025 and a Spa rookie
While Fritz and Hanika have raced at Spa in the EWC on three occasions, this week’s 8 Hours of Spa Motos signals a new adventure for Australian O’Halloran, who was signed as Niccolò Canepa’s replacement for the 2025 season.
“We went the Wednesday after Le Mans,” Fritz said. “Unfortunately, we brought the rain with us to Spa because it was raining all day. At least he could make some laps with a stock bike so at least Jason knows the track now. For sure when it’s dry it’s different because you ride different with the race bike. But we have seven or eight hours of testing on Thursday, which is very important. We can go with two bikes and bring him up to speed, which is really important to be fast. We also know if one of us is too slow the race will be done by two. But overall we are super-confident. Jason did an amazing job at Le Mans and in the tests before the season he was the same fast or faster. So we are really confident he will be up to speed really fast. With this confidence for sure we will be really strong again in Spa.”
Original Source [ FIM EWC ]
