In the first three days of testing in Jerez de la Frontera, Niccolo Canepa and Bradley Smith had a first contact with the bike and the team with which they will face the MotoE World Cup. The weather was very changeable, creating dry, wet and damp asphalt conditions over the three days.
The teams of the MotoE World Cup had a first roll-out at the Circuito de Jerez-Angel Nieto last week. These first three days of testing took place in highly changeable weather conditions. The sessions on the first day took place on a dry track while the second day was characterized by rain. In the morning session of the third day only a few riders entered the track due to the cold and damp track. Only in the afternoon the track become dry and fast again to continue testing.
This year Niccolo Canepa and Bradley Smith both return to MotoE after respectively one and two years of absence, and will compete in the WithU GRT RNF MotoE Team.
Canepa was consistently in the top for all three days. The Italian was also first with a time of 1:58.895 in wet and humid track conditions on Tuesday, showing that he was immediately back in confidence with the bike he had last ridden at Le Mans in October 2020. In the third day, Canepa also improved his best time in dry conditions and finished fourth with a personal best of 1:49.327. After 62 laps in total, Canepa took sixth place in the general test standings.
Smith had a fantastic start to this test, setting the fastest time in the first session on Monday morning, and then repeated on wet Tuesday morning. At the end of the first day, Smith had his best lap of 1:49.719, in the third session. The British rider covered a total of 58 laps, setting the tenth fastest laptime in the combined standings of all three days.
The next test will be again on the Andalusian circuit of Jerez de la Frontera, from April 11th to 13th, two weeks before the start of the championship.
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Niccolò Canepa
“I have to say, I’m really, really satisfied about these three days of testing, because we had two days in the dry and one day in the wet, so we were able to try the bike in different conditions. We saw that we were fast in all situations, which is fantastic! It hasn’t been easy to re-adapt to the bike immediately for me. Most of our competitors are riding non-stop and I didn’t ride the Energica bike for pretty long, but I’m very satisfied, because I had a good feeling immediately and the result at the end of the day is really good. The team works in an amazing way, the bike felt great, so I’m already looking forward to the next test!”
Bradley Smith
“Obviously, it was nice to be back riding in MotoE. It was fun to start this adventure with the new team, although some parts of the team are the same. It was anyway nice to get back and see the developments of the last three years, mainly being the weight of the bike, a different rear tyre and the front fork. It started very well on day one and then we spent the rest of the time trying to learn the bike and everything as much as possible, so that we are readier for the race weekends. I think the information gathered from both riders gives us a lot of clear direction for the next test. I’m looking forward then to put everything together and getting a little bit closer to the fastest guys.”
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