MotoE: Casadei takes overall lead after Barcelona win, Torres stumbles towards end of the season

Mattia Casadei (HP Pons Los40) has taken the MotoE championship lead after winning the second race in Barcelona a few days before the final weekend of the season. He benefited twice from mistakes by double champion Jordi Torres (GasGas Aspar Team), which in turn cost the Spaniard a good result. Third in the title fight - Matteo Ferrari (Felo Gresini MotoE) - is only one point behind Casadei. Andrea Mantovani (RNF MotoE Team) had celebrated his second win of the season on Saturday morning.

The weekend had actually started well for title favourite Torres with pole position on Friday. He started the race in the best possible way and was able to keep Casadei behind him. Mantovani lost a position at the start to Hector Garzo (Dynavolt Intact MotoE), who worked his way up to third. The Italian passed him again two laps later in the first corner.

That opened up the battle for the lead between the top 3, which kept changing over the last three laps. On lap 5, first Casadei overtook Torres on the exit of turn 10, who then benefited from the slipstream on the start/finish straight and passed again himself. This game was repeated in lap 6, but this time, Torres touched the rider in front of him.

Both managed to stay on the bike, but the Spaniard dropped back to 7th place. So Mantovani saw his chance to pass in turn 10 and celebrated his second win of the season. Third was Hector Garzo ahead of Matteo Ferrari. Casadei had joined the world championship fight though.

Result of the 13th MotoE round in Barcelona

At the start of race 2, Casadei attacked right from the start and snatched the racing line away from Torres from the inside. So he straight took the lead. However, due to the strong slipstream on the long straight, the lead kept changing between Casadei, Torres and Mantovani. Hector Garzo also improved and moved up to position 2 behind Torres.

On lap 5, Torres was unable to stay on his bike, which oversteered on braking for turn 5, and crashed, briefly giving Garzo the lead. On the last lap, however, he was overtaken by Casadei and Mantovani, and the second Pons rider, Spinelli, also jumped onto the podium.

 

 

 

 

 

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Barcelona marked the first rough patch of Jordi Torres' season, who now trails Casadei by 21 points in the standings. The latter has been showing excellent late form himself, winning four of the last five races. Lurking just one point behind his long-time rival in third place is Matteo Ferrari. There are two more races on the schedule at Misano in the season finale in a week's time.

Result of the 14th MotoE round in Barcelona