The day a mechanic returned being a motorcycle racer

The 2026 season will see the return to a world championship of Kevin van Leuven, a former rider who was very strong in Dutch motorcycle racing and also took part in a few races in the Supersport World Championship and the European Superstock 600 Championship. Van Leuven will in fact take part in the Sportbike World Championship with his own team, VLR Racing, and line up Dutch rider Kas Beekmans on a Suzuki machine. This is exactly the same team-rider-bike combination that won the British Sportbike Championship title in 2025.

Not everyone, however, remembers a very curious story involving Kevin van Leuven, which dates back to 2018.

What happened

We need to start from the other key figure in this story: Anthony West.

After many seasons in the MotoGP paddock and previous experience in the Superbike and Supersport World Championships, West returned to Supersport in 2017 with the EAB antwest Racing Team, born from the collaboration between the Australian rider and Ferry Schoenmakers’ EAB Racing Team. In 2017, West raced on a Yamaha with good results, and things were going just as well in 2018, as West achieved several top-10 finishes on a Kawasaki.

Everything was going relatively smooth until September 14, 2018. Right before the round scheduled in Portimão, the FIM announced that Anthony West had been suspended from any race.

The reason was a doping test carried out three months earlier during the Misano round: West apparently tested positive to a stimulant substance that was not specified at the time. Pending further confirmation, West was not disqualified (at least not yet), but he was still provisionally suspended from any racing.

Since the suspension was announced on Thursday evening, less than 24 hours before the first free practice sessions, the EAB antwest Racing team was unable to replace its rider in Portugal.

An interesting solution

West was convinced he was right and therefore appealed the FIM’s decision, being sure he would be able to win and return racing soon. But no updates came and, in the meantime, the next round at Magny-Cours was approaching.

The team therefore had to replace West for the race weekend in France. And this is where Kevin van Leuven, mentioned at the beginning of the article, comes into play.

In 2018, van Leuven had put his riding career aside to join the team of Anthony West himself, being one of his mechanics.
Therefore at Magny-Cours, with little to no time available to find a replacement rider, they opted for the most in-house solution you can see in such cases: replacing West with one of his own mechanics!

It’s true that Kevin van Leuven was still a rider, but in 2018 he had only competed spradically, focusing mainly on his role within the EAB antwest Racing Team...

Conclusion

Being a mechanic, Kevin van Leuven put his leathers and helmet back on for a weekend in the Supersport World Championship. And it didn’t go bad at all: he qualified 20th out of 30 riders and finished 22nd out of 26 in the race, without paying a huge gap from other riders. A very important highlight for the Dutchman, who later announced the end of his racing career after this experience.

Returning to the present and putting aside the Anthony West affair (which was widely discussed at the time), in 2026 Kevin van Leuven is therefore back in the WorldSBK paddock seven and a half years after that curious experience, which was as improvised and “unusual” as very meaningful for him. And he returns as the head of his own team, VLR Racing (together with his partner Tasia Rodink), and, not a minor detail, as reigning British Sportbike champion.