Casadei pounces late on Zaccone to win Race 1

Race 1 for the FIM Enel MotoE™ World Championship gave us unpredictable action from start to finish at the Gran Premio d’Italia Brembo, with Mattia Casadei (LCR E-Team) taking victory in spectacular fashion. Casadei now has a six point lead in the Championship after crossing the line to win just 0.269s ahead of Alessandro Zaccone (Tech3 E-Racing), who led from the start of Race 1 before going head-to-head with the reigning World Champion. The final spot on the podium went the way of Hector Garzo (Dynavolt Intact GP MotoE™) after a sensational and consistent ride.

Before that, on the first start of Race 1, Zaccone claimed the lead before Dynavolt Intact GP MotoE™’s Lukas Tulovic suffered a crash at Bucine on the opening lap. This brought out the red flag and the race was halted and later rescheduled to take place at 18:40 local time (UTC +2).

On the second start to Race 1, it was Garzo, who took the lead on the exit of San Donato before Zaccone fought back at turn 2 – beginning to push hard on the opening lap. The #61 bridged a comfortable gap of half a second by lap two before setting the fastest lap of the race, as the battle for second formed behind.

Slipstreaming would once again prove to be vital at Mugello, allowing the chasing group to slowly catch Zaccone in the lead. Casadei was now the rider at the forefront of the second group, who continued to charge hard with just three laps remaining. The gap came down every lap with everybody waiting to see where and when Casadei would strike.

Casadei waited until the final lap of the race with the #40 passing Zaccone to lead on the run down to turn one. The front three were locked together with Garzo now beginning to pile the pressure on Zaccone. However, it would be smooth sailing for Casadei, who did not allow anyone to pass on the last lap, allowing the Italian to claim his first win since the opening round of the season. Meanwhile, there would be drama further back on the last lap with Jordi Torres (Openbank Aspar Team) crashing in the closing stages of Race 1.

Further down the order, Zannoni took fourth position, after a great battle with Eric Granado (LCR E-Team) which went down to the wire. Andrea Mantovani (KLINT Forward Factory Team) was sixth at the line after yet another strong ride to finish ahead of Massimo Roccoli (Ongetta SIC58 Squadra Corse), who took seventh at Mugello. Matteo Ferrari (Felo Gresini MotoE™) finished in eighth, scoring more Championship points after finishing ahead of Miquel Pons (Axxis-MSI), who dropped down the order to ninth in the latter stages of the race. Nicholas Spinelli (Tech3 E-Racing) rounded out the top 10 and is now 44 points adrift from the Championship lead.

The next chapter of the season MotoE™ season is not far away and will take place at the historic TT Circuit Assen for another thrilling two races in three weeks time, so make sure you keep up to date with all the action on motogp.com!

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