Friday April 17, 2026 at 12:09pm
From grassroots events all the way up to full FIM World Championship competition, families play an integral part in motorcycle sport as the passion for racing is passed down through successive generations.
Sam and Thomas Christie at 2025 FIM Sidecar World Championship - Le Mans (France) © Mark Walters
In paddocks around the world – irrespective of the disciplines involved – you will find siblings, parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents working together and there is possibly no better example than in the hugely-competitive FIM Sidecar World Championship where British brothers Sam, Thomas and Adam Christie are all proven winners.
Last season the formidable combination of thirty-two-year-old Sam behind the controls and twenty-eight-year-old Thomas in the chair raced to the FIM gold medal, while Thomas’ twin brother Adam – as passenger to Pekka Päivärinta, a five-time FIM Sidecar Rider World Champion and official FIM Legend – ended the season fourth with nine podium finishes including a race win.
On the eve of the opening round of the 2026 FIM Sidecar World Championship, that gets under way this coming weekend (17-18 April) at Le Mans in France, we caught up with Sam to understand more about his top-flight career and get his view on racing, winning and – of course – sibling rivalry.
With his father, Simon, an accomplished sidecar racer with a career that stretched from the early 1980s until just a handful of seasons ago, Sam – along with his younger brothers – was destined to compete in this highly-specialised discipline.
“We were all brought up around it so it was never really a question, it was just natural for us to start racing sidecars,” he said. “At sixteen I had a bike on the road but I sold it to fund racing. I didn’t ride anything competitively until I started riding the sidecar.”
Sam’s first taste of world championship competition came in 2013 when he passengered for French rider Jean-Louis Hergott for six rounds. Switching to the rider’s seat full-time in 2016 following a string of injuries, with Adam as passenger he returned to the world championship in 2018 and the pair twice finished fifth.
Sam and Thomas Christie at 2025 FIM Sidecar World Championship - Le Mans (France) © Mark Walters
“I still struggle with some of the injuries now but it’s a bit easier to work around when driving instead of passengering. Me and Adam had a great few seasons [but] in 2021 Adam suffered a very badly broken leg. In the meantime, Tom’s driver stopped racing so we agreed to do one season together until Adam was fit and, at the end of that season, Adam decided he was happy for myself and Tom to carry on together and that he would find another ride to get him back up to pace again.”
With Thomas in the chair, the pair climbed the world rankings, leaping from tenth in 2022 to fourth the following season. In 2024 they claimed FIM bronze before upgrading to a hard-earned gold last season.
“It’s been such a proud moment to win the championship. It was a childhood dream of ours which we’ve worked extremely hard towards over the years and we are over the moon to achieve it. We couldn’t have done it without the support of our family, close friends and sponsors.”
So close are the three brothers, not only do they share the same starting grid, together they run their own engineering company – CES Performance – that manufactures sidecars, but it is no surprise to discover that despite their rock-solid family bond there remains a very real sibling rivalry.
“There’s a big family rivalry between us,” Sam concludes with a smile. “It’s rare there’s a racing-related conversation that doesn’t include comparing ourselves to each other somehow!”
The opening round of the 2026 FIM Sidecar World Championship – staged as part of Le Mans’ famous 24 Heures Motos celebrations – gets under way with an eleven-lap Sprint race scheduled to start at 15:35 (local time) on Friday 17 April before the eighteen-lap Main race the following day at 11:50 (local time).