It was under temperatures worthy of an approaching Spring that the MotoE World Championship pilots faced today the 4592 meters of the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve.
For the first time in Portimão and in Portugal, the 18 pilots from the 9 teams of the grid ‘showed’ for the first time the 15 Algarve curves to the Ducati that power this championship.
With four 15-minute sessions on the agenda, the day started with Spanish rider Hector Garzó leading the first session with a best lap time of 1m49.336s ahead of Jordi Torres and Nicolas Spinelli, the only two who were less than a second behind the Spanish rider. The tone was set, but in the second session, Spinelli improved the best lap time by almost a second to take the first place in the time sheet with 1m48.487s, followed by Matteo Ferrari and Kevin Zannoni, this time in a group of 9 riders who were separated by less than a second.
The two afternoon sessions once again showcased the work done by the teams, and it was with a time of 1m48.003s that Spinelli closed the third session, once again marked by small differences among the top ten. Hector Garzó finished in second place, only 173 milliseconds behind, 18 milliseconds less than Alessandro Zaccone, the third fastest.
The final session of the day saw even faster laps, and in the end, Spinelli finished the day in first place by clocking in at 1m47.632s, 101 milliseconds ahead of Alessandro Zaccone. With 11 riders separated by less than a second, the final session of the day saw Kevin Zannoni as the third fastest.
The MotoE World Championship is using the fast Ducati V21L for the second consecutive year, electric motorcycles capable of reaching a top speed of over 270 km/h, and for the first time, they are in Portugal, with the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve being the stage for the first race in 2024, between March 22nd and 24th.
