Confirmed: Thibault Benistant to work with Yves Demaria in 2025


It’s set to be a very big year in Thibault Benistant’s career as he enters his final year racing MX2 World Championship in 2025 due to the U23 age rule. A former EMX125 and EMX250 champion, the French rider has bags of talent and during the Tom Vialle/Jago Geerts era of MX2 was very impressive.

However, the past few years haven’t gone according to plan and injuries haven’t been kind to him either. Heading into his final year racing the MX2 World Championship, Benistant has decided to change things up in his programme.

In 2021, Benistant started to work with former GP rider, Kenny Vandueren but this year was reunited with Herjan Brakke again as the Hutten Metaal Yamaha team now run the Factory Yamaha MX2 team. Benistant had worked with Brakke previously during his EMX days when he was with the team.

For the 2025 season, Benistant has decided to make a change as he’ll be working with Yves Demaria who is the trainer at the SR Motoblouz Honda team and will continue that role next year as well. Demaria has done a great job getting Valentin Guillod’s career back on track in MXGP and has also helped Kevin Horgmo impress and surprise a lot of people in his rookie MXGP season.

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Image: MXGP/Infront Moto Racing

Not only will Benistant work closely with Demaria, it means after many years spending most of his time in Belgium/Netherlands, he’ll now spend a lot more time in France including during the off season. Demaria will be hoping to unlock Benistant’s full potential in MX2 in what is his last year in the class. He’ll need to have a strong season to get good offers in 2026 for MXGP or even in America.

“Indeed we will work together for 2025”, Demaria confirmed to GateDrop.com. “We had our first contact at Lommel. I have known Thibault for a very long time as he is from my region. We talked a lot and decided to work together”. 

“The Hutten Metaal Yamaha team also validated this agreement and I thanked them for this. Thibault will therefore train in a different way than in recent seasons. Our goal is to finish the 2025 season on the podium. It’s a very interesting challenge because a lot of people in the mx world have tried to discourage me. We will try our best to achieve our goals”, Demaria added.