The weekend in Austria for the Ongetta SIC58 Squadra Corse team in MotoE he reserved lights and shadows. Everything was perfect in the first three free practice sessions, on Friday and Saturday morning, with Mattia Casadei always very fast. Everything went wrong from then on, especially in the E-pole where Mattia crashed, finding himself starting from the last row of the race. E-pole is an extremely difficult qualifying format that will shake the wrists of even racing veterans. There is only one good lap in which everything has to be perfect: if you don't take risks they all pass you by, if you take too many parts last as happened in the Austrian weekend also to Nico Terol (former 125cc world champion) and Randy De Puniet (former MotoGP rider). In practice, Casadei made only one mistake in the whole weekend, but unfortunately it happened on the only lap in which it shouldn't have happened.
Hereafter the words of Paolo Simoncelli and the technical comment by Marco Grana, the coordinator of the team.
Paolo Simoncelli
“Mattia Casadei, the youngest rider in this category among many veterans, with us since 2013 I have placed a lot of trust in him. He is a very fast rider, he has style and knows how to ride the bike but punctually when there is to collect, close the race, get results, too often he wastes everything by throwing the bike to the four winds. This is what happened again this weekend, on Saturday the E-pole promised well, everything suggested a good result but at the 2nd corner all the efforts made were thwarted. It's true, in the race the rain made everything more difficult but at this point in his career he needs to come up with something more because in August / September the teams pull a line and the difference between pros and cons must be positive. At a certain point only the famous "here and now" counts in a nutshell you have to be stronger and win. "
Marco Grana
"Mattia's weekend was still positive. During each free practice session we were able to stay in the first 4 positions as during the Valencia test (we adopted the same setup). The time of 1′.35 ”.218 of the FP3 done without wake let us hope for an excellent qualifying session (here the post dedicated to FP3) but unfortunately the crash during the E-pole forced us to start from the rear. The race in wet track conditions, starting so late, did not show our potential. Just before the race we managed to do a wet setup; we modified the whole bike even if it was very difficult to get the setup right in different conditions compared to the previous days' tests. The bike feels the changes but, compared to a traditional bike, it needs bigger changes to be appreciated by the rider. We are so sorry because we worked well all weekend but we got a result that certainly does not reflect our potential. At Misano we will try again to be protagonists. "
At this link you can download the results file of the race with the timing of the Ongetta SIC58 Squadra Corse team. (link)
