🇫🇷 Val de Vienne Testing 2026

White fairings, old leathers, it can only be the annual weeks testing at the circuit Val de Vienne, in France. Once again “Eckarts training week” has brought the sidecar teams together for their first outing for the 2026 season.

The past two days the weather has been perfect for the teams to blow away the cobwebs after the long winter.

A lot of adjustments have been getting done, new parts being tested, suspension setup getting done. A full week for the teams to get sorted before the first World round at Le Mans in four weeks time.

There has been some team changes over the winter too.

Kevin Cable has a new passenger, French man Yann Druel will replace Kevin,s long time passenger Charlie Richardson who has retired from the sport after many successful years.

Former multiple champion Tim Reeves has teamed up with experienced French lady passenger Melanie Farnier. They are getting more and more laps in, getting used to each another. Unfortunately the team had a mechanical problem yesterday which cost them most of the afternoon testing.

Here too all the way from Australia is Corey and Danyon Turner. They will contest the championship this year. A big setback for them though, on the first day of practice they had a spill on track and passenger Danyon has broken his wrist. Defiantly not how they wanted the year to start. Some good news for them though, Dutch lady passenger Soraya de Meulenaere has offered to help out and passenger for the rest of the week, this letting driver Corey get used to their new machine, getting setup sorted, and getting some laps under his belt. For passenger Danyon though, it could be up to twelve weeks before he will start back.

Sidecar partners Eckart Rosinger and Michael Breitenbach are really pleased with how many championship teams have come to the test, and are giving information out to the teams about the forthcoming 2026 FIM Sidecar World Championship.