BMS Racing and Team BRIDE Partnership Produces Two FPV World Champions

What started as a cultural bridge between Japan's once-isolated FPV racing scene and the broader international community has become one of drone racing's more compelling collaboration stories. The partnership between BMS Racing and Team BRIDE, which launched in 2022, has since produced two world champions in FPV competition and a constructors championship in Japan's premier drone racing series.

Team BRIDE is not a conventional drone racing outfit. Based in Nagoya, the organization is primarily a car racing bucket seat manufacturer that also fields multiple race cars across various motorsport classes. Its drone racing division, formed through collaboration with BMS Racing, represents an unusual crossover from automotive performance culture into FPV competition. That crossover appears to be working. The partnership's stated aim was to create "a cultural mix between the once more isolated Japanese FPV Racing community and the rest of the world," and the competitive results have followed.

In their first full year racing in the Japan Drone League, BMS Racing claimed the constructors championship for the 2023 season. The JDL, which serves as Team BRIDE's home series, has since drawn international pilots from across the globe, a shift that reflects the broader reach the collaboration was designed to generate.

At the center of BMS Racing's competitive identity is Thomas Bitmatta, who races under the handle BMSThomas. Bitmatta has been competing at the national and international level since 2016 and has accumulated a record that few FPV pilots can match: multiple world championships, five Australian National Titles, and victories at every Australian Open he has entered. His competition log spans more than a dozen countries, including the United States, China, Croatia, South Korea, France, Germany, Slovenia, Turkey, New Zealand and Switzerland, among others.

The collaboration has grown beyond individual achievement. BMS Racing describes the partnership as forming a team that travels internationally to create pathways for pilots to reach overseas competitions, an infrastructure piece that the FPV circuit has historically lacked. "BMS Racing is honoured to be partnered with Team BRIDE and looks forward to sharing many more racing adventures together," the team stated.

The production of two FPV world champions from within the collaboration's competitive scene marks the clearest measure yet of what the partnership has built since 2022. For a discipline still fighting for mainstream recognition, a manufacturer-backed, cross-continental team delivering world champions is exactly the kind of institutional legitimacy the sport needs to grow.