Electric Race News: Zongshen takes pole position in both eRoadRacing events this weekend in Valencia

Zongshen has the pole position in both eRoadRacing races this weekend at Valencia. Both qualifying rounds were held today, with two Zongshen riders finishing 1st and 2nd in each race, giving them 1st and 2nd positions in the starting grid for both races.

Because there will be two eRoadRacing races on Sunday, the two qualifying rounds are each assigned to one of the races. Qualifying 1 determined the starting grid for the sprint race on Sunday morning, while Qualifying 2 determined the starting grid for the full race on Sunday afternoon.

The results sheet for Q1 show 7 riders with Ho Chi Fung getting the fastest lap speed, 1:58.218. Fung is a perennial top rider in Team Zongshen.

This is the starting grid for the 4-lap sprint race:

CHI FUNG, Hoi (01.58,219) – Zongshen
RONG ZAI, Su (02.03,579) – Zongshen
MIRALLES, Julian (02.08,177) – Renegade Z
PENA, Oscar (02.15,044) – Zongshen
WEST, Sam (02.15,265) – Agni Racing
MENCHEN, Adrian (02.17,434) – Renegade Z
GASSE, Harald (02.27,667) – Renegade Z

Zongshen is the team from China that has raced with the TTXGP since 2010. They're currently racing with bikes that have AC motors. Agni Motors has raced with the TTXGP since 2009, and is an electric motor manufacturer from India, commercializing motor designs developed by Cedric Lynch. However, I've never heard of "Renegade Z" but we see from the results sheet that their top two riders are Spanish and Harald Gasse is German.

A posting on the eRoadRacing website says Renegade Z is an "independent Dutch Team" using 2013 model Zero S's. Their aim is to show factory-produced bikes work not just for commuters, but also racers. Their S's have the 11.4 kilowatt-hour packs. The spec'd top speed of those bikes is close to 100 miles/hr. A group of Zero S's were entered in the recent Pikes Peak Hill Climb, with official support from Zero Motorcycles and Hollywood Electrics.

The results sheet from Q2 showed 7 riders, but this time Harald Gasse was too slow to qualify for the race. The starting grid is:

CHI FUNG, Hoi (01.56,505) – Zongshen
RONG ZAI, Su (02.02,920) – Zongshen
MIRALLES, Julian (02.04,301) – Renegade Z
MENCHEN, Adrian (02.05,890) – Renegade Z
WEST, Sam (02.13,387) – Agni Racing
PENA, Oscar (02.18,327) – Zongshen
GASSE, Harald DNQ (02.25,736) – Renegade Z

Why did Gasse not qualify? This never happened under the TTXGP, but did happen under the FIM e-Power series. What's happening is that FIM has a rule effectively requiring all the bikes in the grid to be within a certain lap speed of each other. Look at the spread of lap times here and we see that Gasse is going quite a bit slower than Fung.

Between the two qualifying rounds everyone posted better lap times, so Gasse must have just barely fallen below the threshold to qualify. This is the explanation on the eRoadRacing site: "Unfortunately, Gasse failed to qualify due to the 20 per cent speed-variant rules set by FIM sporting regulations."
The other thing we notice is the two Spanish riders in Renegade Z did very well indeed.

The images below come from Facebook postings, most of which are in an album located here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.700942073256132.1073741835.148160931867585&type=1