With two Top-10 finishes, Spanish MotoE rider Maria Herrera closes her second season in the all-electric series with a very positive last weekend at the French GP.
The final 2020 event of the second MotoE season went underway with many changes, many improvements and, again, with a female driver on the field: Maria Herrera. At the French GP weekend that just went in the books at Le Mans, the Spanish rider had her best round of the year in the all-electric championship with two Top-10 finishes.
Fastest in the ePole session was Jordi Torres (Pons Racing) with a time of 1:43,843 ahead of Matteo Ferrari (Trentino Gresini MotoE) and Mike di Meglio (EG 0,0 Marc VDS).
Maria Herrera was 12th fastest and was set to start in the midfield for the first race of the weekend.
In Race 1, Ferrari had the best start and pulled away. Behind him, Casadei had a highside and crashed, bringing out a red flag that interrupted the race. To recover the motorcycle in a safe way, the marshals required the help of the Spanish fire department and the new race distance was set to 5 laps.
Right after the restart, several riders (Dominic Aegerter, Niccolo Canepa and Xavier Siméon) crashed, but no red flag was shown this time. Ferrari crashed as well, leaving Torres up in the lead ahead of Di Meglio and Niki Tuuli. Di Meglio found no space to make a move stick and Torres took his first victory in the series.
Maria finished the race in P7, with 14 riders crossing the finish line. The Spaniard was fast and always close to the riders in front of her, before she could take the chequered flag with her best result of the season, which she commentend with: “It was a very crazy race, in which I started very well on both occasions."
"I have seen actions of other riders that have not been correct, and it has been seen in the crashes. In the second outing, the tyres were cold and I didn't feel well, I was skidding a lot, but little by little I have increased the pace and have started riding faster. I'm very happy to have been able to fight, but it was a shame that there were so many crashes because they separated us a lot."
"For tomorrow's race I have a good position on the grid and, with confidence, I think we can improve a lot.”
In race 2, Torres had the best start but again not all riders could successfully complete the first lap: Eric Granando was the first to crash out, followed by Alejandro Medina, as well as Tommaso Marcon. In the midst of the chaos, Torres dropped back to 6th, just one place behind Maria Herrera.
The race was lead by Di Meglio, Tuuli and Josh Hook. At the end Tuuli had the upper end and snapped victory ahead of Di Meglio and Hook. That meant that the 2020 MotoE champion was Jordi Torres, ahead of Matteo Ferrari and Dominique Aegerter.
In a race without much action, Maria finished again the Top-10 with a very solid 9th place that brought her to P17 in the overall rankings.
“I have started very well", she said. "I have overtaken several riders until I have placed in fourth. In the first laps I had several scares, perhaps due to the low temperature, and I lost time with the third."
"It was difficult for me to brake the bike and that made me lose some positions. I have tried to fight, and I am happy with the result, but disappointed because I was not able to ride as hard as I wanted. I have improved a lot in braking, but sometimes I have gone long in the corners.”
In 2021, MotoE will make its return to the racetracks as the agreement with Energica was extended by one year and the identical electric bikes will again be prepared by the Italian manufacturer.
It has not been revealed yet when the next season will start in 2021, but fans of Maria Herrera and of MotoE can expect us to cover more of this series as soon as the new calendar will be released. Stay tuned!