On the eve of the Valencia GP with the Moto2 of the Gresini team, we spoke with Matteo Ferrari about his 2023 in MotoE, which the rider from Rimini finished on the podium for the fifth consecutive season.
Matteo Ferrari from the podium in MotoE 2023 to the wild card in Moto2 in Valencia – After the interview with Mattia Casadei and of Paolo Simoncelli, immediately after the closing of the MotoE World Championship, we also planned to speak with Matteo Ferrari, third in the final championship standings. To do this, we waited until the week of his wild card in the Moto2 World Championship in Valencia. Ferrari, in fact, will have a Kalex from the Gresini team at its disposal, which, for the occasion, will field three Moto2s for the race at the Ricardo Tormo in Valencia.
Rewinding the calendar a few weeks to return to the conclusion of the MotoE World Championship, Ferrari began by saying: “I'm sad for how it ended, but the positive aspect is that I managed to be fast on all the tracks. I finished in third place, once again on the final podium of the category, an excellent result, but I was disappointed with how the final round went on my home track of Misano, where I was never in the fight for victory."
“Reliving the season coldly, there were situations that we could have faced better, first and foremost Austria, from which I could have returned home with 50 points and instead I only got 20. That was the most important moment of my championship . If I hadn't crashed there I would have gone into the last two rounds of the championship in the lead. When you're the first, you play it in a different way, whereas, if you're the chaser, you always have to chase and hope that everything goes well, otherwise you'll miss the train.
Apart from Austria, I was disappointed not to be competitive in the wet. With the rain, we improved compared to the past but we still didn't find the right set-up. The sessions tackled in the wet were qualifying at Sachsering, race 2 at Mugello and the races at Silverstone. On all these occasions we have suffered.
At Sachsenring, between rain and the sanction, I started tenth on the grid. In race 1, we were good at recovering positions and also lucky, so we managed to get to the podium, but in race 2, we lost points simply because we started from behind. Even at Silverstone, I started from behind, and even on that occasion, I wasn't able to recover during the race because I wasn't at my best in the wet and couldn't attack the other riders.
If you want to win a world championship but you make too many empty jokes, then it's difficult to recover. We have seen that in recent years, the pace to win the championship has been around 16 points per race, which means finishing third in all races on average; there isn't much room for missteps."
“Going back to what I was saying before, at the end of the championship, the Misano round left a bad taste in my mouth. You know, if you lose the world championship by playing it, that's fine, that's okay, but if you're cut out even before the start, as happened to me due to the sanction after qualifying, it's disheartening. In the Misano races, we were all very close because we had done the tire test sessions on Thursday, free practice and qualifying on Friday, in short, by Saturday, everyone had sorted out the bike; overtaking in the race was very complicated. Even if another rider was a tenth or two slower, it wasn't enough to overtake without risking a crash.
Looking at the individual successes in the season, they were many and exciting: I won in France despite the long lap penalty, I got poles, victories, podiums, and fastest laps. I can't complain, I was fast, and the team worked well, but as always, we remember the last race more than the whole season."
“Casadei had a great 2023, he was very good. He started the season a little slowly, he had a couple of empty jokes, but in the second half he was ready to seize all the opportunities that came his way. After the summer break, he recovered a lot of points and closed the championship with an advantage that was almost excessive compared to the real values on the field, considering the gaps that usually exist in MotoE. Mattia had a series of victories in the second part of the season which allowed him to gain a lot of points, but on the other hand, there was a decline from Jordi Torres. Jordi is a rider who has always been very consistent, in the two years in which he won the title, he never won many races but he always managed to get the most out of every situation. This year, however, in the last two rounds, Barcelona and Misano, he behaved very anomalously. At the Sachsenring, he was fast but okay, while in Barcelona, he was very much at the limit to go fast, and in fact, he made two mistakes. The first was also a great risk because an extra centimeter was really enough for him to touch Casadei and both ended up on the ground. In that case, the world championship would have been a completely different story."
“Anyway, going back to what I was saying before, the end of the championship left a bad taste in my mouth. As seen above all in Misano, in MotoE, qualifying is always very important because in the race, especially from mid-season onwards, we were all very close. If we look at the whole of 2023, at most, we managed to recover eight positions in the race, but if everything went well, it's not a category where super comebacks are made. This year I have had several races compromised by the qualifying result.
I would also like to say one other thing about qualifying, not to justify my result, but because it seems right to say it. This year there have been many situations in which some riders, always more or less the same, slowed down or stopped on the track to wait to get in the slipstream of another rider. There may be a little, but what happened this year was frankly exaggerated and risky.
The two penalties for falling under the yellow flag regime that I received this year were valid, the rule is clear, but the fact that no one was penalized for slowing down on the track waiting for another rider is not good. Jordi, I and other riders complained to the race direction because, beyond the sporting aspect, it is a safety risk. The strategy in the pits is fine; waiting on the track is not."
Ferrari is one of the four riders who participated in all seasons of the MotoE, together with Maria Herrera, Eric Granado and Mattia Casadei. It is inevitable to ask him how this first year with the Ducati V21L was after having raced the first four championships with the Energica bike.
“At the beginning there was a big gap between the riders, then, session after session, the lap times got very close. It was kind of the same thing with Energica, only this time everything happened much faster, thanks above all to electronics. The big limitation of MotoE, both before and now, is that very little can be done, in terms of set-up.
During the tests, we had worked very well, so at the first race, we were already at a very good level, while other teams were not, and it took them a while to find the right set-up, choose the right map, the best engine brake configuration and so on. But in the end, there are three maps, so sooner or later, we all figure out which one is best. The motorbikes are then all lined up in the charging area, so you take a look around and see which gear ratio was mounted by the fastest rider, how long the swingarm is, how high the forks are and so on. Basically, on set-up, the competition doesn't last long, and everyone quickly gets to have the right set-up; it's not like in the other categories where everyone is closed in his box, and no one knows how opponent's bike is configured.”
“It's the same with maps: after a while everyone goes with the same one. If you pay attention, when exiting corners, we all accelerated in the same way, there was no one gaining or losing compared to anyone else, regardless of the rider's weight. The only way to make a difference was when braking and entering corners; from then on we were all equal. The acceleration is managed by the electronics so much that there is no way to make a difference. The bikes are all the same, the maps are all the same, the electronics make you go as long as there is no sliding or spinning; the result is that during acceleration we all went away the same.
The bike is perfect and fantastic to ride, but the only way to make the difference is to brake hard and enter fast into the corners. In fact, all the crashes that have happened have been caused by the loss at the front to force braking; it's the only way to make a difference.
At the beginning of the season the difference was made by the set-up because it influenced the life of the front tyre. In fact, some riders had a drop in the front after just a few laps, while we had a set-up that allowed us to have a constant performance throughout the race. Then, little by little, everyone got to have the set-up that made the tire work well throughout the race. Indeed, at a certain point, Michelin lowered the pressure limit for the tires, to help some riders who were having problems with the front tire overheating."
“Even the slipstream, during the race, didn't make much difference. On straights like the one in Barcelona or Mugello, you could feel it, but it was useful if you were second, third, or at most fourth. From there on, when we were in a group, everyone had the slipstream of the one in front, and there was no longer any difference. At Le Mans or Sachsenring, the slipstream was almost non-existent.
I hope that next year we can have a little more free electronics and more variables for the mechanical set-up, to be able to make a little more difference. We'll see it in February when we have the first test of 2024 in Portimao. In the meantime, however, I'm enjoying this wild card in Moto2, I've been waiting for it for a long time."
MotoE World Championship 2024
The calendar of MotoE 2024: 16 races and the new-entry of Portimao
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