Zongshen big winner of eRoadRacing first round, Oscar Pena ahead on points

Oscar Pena, Zongshen

Zongshen team member Oscar Pena is leading the European eRoadRacing series after taking 2nd place in both of the races at Valencia, and leading team-mate Ho Chi Fung crashing out in the 2nd race. Overall Zongshen took almost all the podium spots, and are the big winners of the weekend.

The Zongshen line-up is an AC-motored bike, ridden by Fung, and two DC-motored bikes ridden by Pena and Su Rong Zai. In the first race Pena and Zai were battling for 2nd and 3rd the whole race with Pena taking 2nd by a .3 second margin over Zai, while Fung took 1st with a 17 second margin.

In the 2nd race, Fung crashed out in the 1st lap allowing Julian Miralles to lead for a couple laps. Eventually Miralles fell back in the ranks, with Zai and Pena ending up in the 1st and 2nd spots.

Adrian Menchen, Renegade Z

Despite having failed to qualify on Saturday for the 2nd race, Harald Gasse was on the grid and participating. The press release doesn’t explain how this happened, however in the past at e-Power events the staff had appealed to a higher board for permission to allow a bike on the grid despite having fallen below the threshold to qualify. However, according to the press release he didn’t make it out of last place.

We see from the Sprint race results sheet that the total time margin between 1st and last place was 1:56.144 meaning that Fung was about to lap Gasse when Fung crossed the finish line. Haven’t seen a results sheet from the 2nd race of the day, but we assume it’s similar but for Ho Chi Fung being at the bottom with a DNF. The point is to simply notice the gulf of speed between fast and slow bikes.

The fast bikes on this results sheet aren’t as fast as the ones we have in North America, but the speed gulf remains.

In gas powered racing they have the luxury of having enough bikes of a given speed/power class to fill a 20-30 bike grid with just those bikes. In the electric world we don’t have that luxury, there aren’t enough bikes to fill a proper grid, and instead run what should be two classes together as one class.

Sprint race results

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.