The executive director of Fim Enel MotoE World Cup, Nicolas Goubert, ha
talked about how the first tests of the went MotoE which took place in Jerez in November. We have taken some sentences from the interview he gave to Peter McLaren of the online magazine Crash.net.
“The really positive thing [at Jerez] was the riders' reactions. The comments were very positive and the behavior of the bikes was excellent, ultimately no problems except for the weather! I think that every driver will be able to ride according to their own style. [So it will not be the motorbike to impose one] ”.
“The top speed is high enough because the power is there and the torque is there, which means good acceleration. Weight, on the other hand, is a limiting factor because it lengthens braking and makes direction changes more difficult ”.
As for the tuning of the bikes, "it will be less complex than in MotoGP because time on the track will be limited - only two 30-minute free practice sessions on the Friday before Saturday's qualifying and the Sunday race - and you have to consider that some weekends there may be variable weather. "
“To define the set-up, the teams will be able to work on: suspension, two different power delivery modes, three engine braking modes and the electric rear brake. This will be fine for the time available ”.
"Energica he worked a lot on power delivery, to make the bike easy to ride ", Goubert confirms," with an electric motor there is a lot of torque and if it is not managed correctly, riding becomes very difficult. "
“The work done by Energica it was great. When Loris did the tests for us, he told us you could slide the bike and have a lot of fun. "
“I once asked the two test riders to ride together and try to outdo each other. They came back with a big smile, saying it was really fun and to go and watch the track because they had dropped a lot of black lines! "
Not needing the clutch lever, some riders, including Smith, have proposed to mount the rear brake lever on the left handlebar. "Right now we are talking about it," said Goubert "we'll see what to decide". "In March we will talk about it again and if all the riders agree, why not?"
As for the operation of the bike in Jerez, the only issue raised by the teams was the need to continue cooling the battery.
“This was the only problem during testing; the reason was that we tried to insert as many sessions as possible. For example, on Friday we had three sessions very close to each other. "
“When using the bike on the track, the battery gets hot. Then, if you load it straight away in the pits - as we had to do in Jerez - instead of cooling it down, it heats up further, and so on.
“For next year we have made sure we have time to recharge and cool down the battery before a new session begins. So there is nothing to worry about. "
"We have expected all teams to have the same cooling systems, but honestly I think we will only use them on Fridays, between sessions."
More information on the championship MotoE you can find it in this post.
The full Crash.net English interview is available here (link).
