In Jerez it is the first day of testing of the 2019 for the MotoE. All 12 teams are present with the 18 official riders. The bikes are no longer in black as in November but with the official liveries. There were 2 test sessions today, as many will be for each of the next two days. During FP1 in the morning, the riders dedicated themselves to familiarizing themselves with the new bike, lapping just above 1 ′: 50 ″, in line with the best time recorded during last November's tests by Bradley Smith. During FP2 some riders pushed a little more by lowering the times by 1 ″ while others concentrated on consistency in performance.
The fastest in FP1 was Mike Di Meglio of the Marc EG0,0 VDS team, followed by Randy De Puniet of the LCR E-Team of Lucio Cecchinello, while the third time was of Alex De Angelis of the Pramac Racing team MotoE.
During FP2 the times dropped and the fastest of the day was the Brazilian Eric Granado (Avinta Esponsorama Racing), the only one to drop below 1 ′: 49 ″ and doing 5 out of 8 laps timed under 1 ′ : 50 ″. Behind him was Niki Tuuli (Ajo MotoE Team), Finnish, with 433 thousandth and third the Spaniard Héctor Garzo (Tech3 E-Racing), at 497 thousandths, who tested the MotoE for the first time, not having participated in the November tests.
The group of riders compacted between FP1 and FP2, passing from a gap between the first and last classified of 3,8 sec to 2,4 sec, a sign that all the riders are gaining confidence with the new bike. By way of comparison, during the Moto3 tests he tested in Jerez at the end of February in similar conditions, the fastest was Masiá in 1: 45.241. The gap today is therefore just under 4 ″ to the advantage of Moto3 but it is likely that in the remaining two days the riders of the MotoE they will further lower their times (we had written this before the fire that destroyed all the bikes). In terms of top speed, the maximum value was reached by Alex De Angelis with 222 km / h.
Alex himself expressed great surprise for such good times at the first real test: "I don't think anyone expected respectable times like those recorded today, unthinkable times".
Analyzing the times of the riders it should be taken into account that not all of them rode with a fully charged battery due to electrical load problems of the circuit system which limited the number of bikes that could be charged at the same time. For the Tech3 team, for example, Garzò set the third time by lapping with a fully charged battery while his teammate Foray had the partially charged battery available.
A first technical detail observed today was the lever present on the left handlebar of some pilots, for example Smith and Gibernau. There MotoE it has no gearbox and therefore basic clutch the left handlebar is without lever. In November, however, some pilots had asked to move the rear brake control there. On this occasion, some pilots got to try this solution.
Below are the times for FP1 and FP2
