MotoE 2023: the riders of the MotoE World Championship arrive at the Catalan GP, the penultimate round of the 2023 season. Jordi Torres is still the championship leader and has the first match point of the season at his home track, but he is undermined by Mattia Casadei and Matteo Ferrari.
The MotoE is ready to face the Barcelona circuit, the penultimate round of the 2023 season of the MotoGP electric class.
The leader of the FIM Enel MotoE World Championship, Jordi Torres (Openbank Aspar Team), faced what may have been his toughest round of the season in Austria. Despite this, Torres leaves the Red Bull Ring first in the standings and arrives at his home track to fight for his first match point to win the 2023 title. The Spanish rider is 15 points ahead of his pursuers, and his approach to the race continues to show consistency, pace and the ability to get the most out of every situation. Having said that, what can we expect from the weekend in Barcelona?
The rider in the best form at the moment is Mattia Casadei (HP Pons Los40), who arrives at the penultimate round undefeated after the victory at Silverstone and the two at the Red Bull Ring. Three consecutive full race victories is a result never achieved before in MotoE, which brought Casadei up to second place in the standings. Will the Italian rider be able to make four? Or at least maintain this pace in the standings?
The third rider in the fight for the 2023 title is Matteo Ferrari (Felo Gresini MotoE). After crashing while leading in Race 1 in Austria, Ferrari had to make a decision on the last lap of Race 2, choosing to finish behind Casadei but gaining 20 important points for the general classification. Ferrari chose not to take any risks and is now just one point behind his compatriot. In retrospect, it seems to have been a good decision.
A bad luck in Race 2 at the Red Bull Ring instead hit Eric Granado (LCR E-Team). The Brazilian rider exited the fight for the podium having claimed three in a row, and this has probably ended his hopes of winning the title. What penalized the Brazilian rider was certainly his injury at the beginning of the season and his failure to participate in the first two races. In April, in the Barcelona test, Granado was the fastest, and this puts him among the favorites to win the Catalunya GP.
Hector Garzò (Dynavolt Intact GP MotoE), fourth in the standings, and his teammate Randy Krummenacher, fifth, had a tough Austrian GP and in Barcelona they will certainly be looking to get back on the top step of the podium.
Finally, Kevin Zannoni (Ongetta SIC58 Squadra Corse) definitively joined the front runners with an excellent performance in Austria. From the first pole position of his career, the Italian has conquered his first two podiums and, together with Casadei, has not missed a parc ferme throughout the weekend. Will he be able to continue on this path and to be among the first in the MotoE also in Barcelona?
Also in Catalonia, Luca Salvadori will not be at the start of the two races MotoE; in his place on the Ducati V21L of the Prettl Pramac MotoE team there will be the Spaniard Oscar Gutiérrez, 12th in the two races in Austria.
MotoE World Championship
The TV and streaming schedule of the GP in Barcelona
Numbers and stats of MotoE 2023 on the eve of the Barcelona GP
With his last three wins in a row, Casadei brings his total MotoE career wins to five and now stands behind Granado, the most victorious rider in MotoE with 11 successes, and Ferrari, with seven victories.
Among the riders participating in the 2023 season, none have achieved a similar number of victories to Granado and Ferrari; Torres, the winner of two seasons of MotoE, has won only four races so far. Among the riders who have participated in the past MotoE seasons, among the most victorious is Dominique Aegerter, with five successes, the same as Casadei.
So far, seven riders have won a race in 2023: Ferrari (3), Casadei (3), Torres (2) and Granado, Mantovani, Krummenacher and Garzò each.
Regarding the podiums, ten riders, more than half of the MotoE line-up, have reached the podium in at least one race: Ferrari (7), Torres (6), Casadei (6), Krummenacher (4), Granado (4), Garzo (3), Manfredi (2), Zannoni (2), Mantovani (1), and Spinelli (1).
In 2023, the Dynavolt Intact GP MotoE team, HP Pons Los40 and Felo Gresini MotoE achieved seven podiums each, one more than the Openbank Aspar team. Behind them, the LCR E-Team and Ongetta Sic58 Squadra Corse won 4, while the RNF team won one. Tech3 E-Racing and Prettl Pramac Racing are at zero but still have four races to get their first podium of the season. The team with the most points is Dynavolt Intact GP MotoE (283), ahead of HP Pons Los40 (256) and Openbank Aspar (203).
MotoE World Championship
The standings of the 2023 championship
The performance of the MotoE 2023
In the first two rounds of 2023, at Le Mans and Mugello, the V21L beat the previous lap record by more than three seconds. A new track record was also set at the Sachsenring. Furthermore, in both races of the French GP, all the participants were faster than the previous lap record of the MotoE. Also in the Dutch GP at Assen, the new one MotoE was faster than the previous track record, this time by 2.5 seconds.
Already at the beginning of the season, in the first test of 2023, in March, Granado had been half a second faster than the official record of the MotoE in Jerez. A month later, in the second test, Granado was again the fastest, lowering the official MotoE lap record in Barcelona by three seconds.
At Mugello, the MotoE set its new top-speed record: at the end of the main straight, Jordi Torres reached the speed of 281,9 km/h.
Here is some information on the Ducati V21L: the acceleration data were recorded during a start while the braking data are those recorded at the end of the main straight in Barcelona (turn 1).
Photos: motogp.com
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