MotoE: Catastrophe As All 18 Bikes Destroyed in Jerez Blaze

The newly built E-Paddock housing the MotoE Championship bikes and materials suffered a devastating fire at the Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto, causing major damage but fortunately no one was injured.

The state of the destruction emerged the next morning with all 18 Energica Ego MotoE bikes highly damaged in the fire along with a lot of expensive equipment from riders kit, tools and laptops. There is an investigation ongoing as to what caused the fire.

The MotoE riders were testing this week in Jerez ahead of the inaugural championship which was set to take place at the Spanish circuit when MotoGP returned to Europe on the 5th of May. The championship was set to race at Le Mans, Sachsenring, Red Bull Ring & conclude at Misano in September.

With the season set to kick off in six weeks time, this has now thrown the championship into question as it puts a time constraint on Italian firm Energica – who provided the bikes – to produce enough bikes for the start of the season.

MotoGP bosses have confirmed the championship will still go ahead with 5 races in 2019 but the first round of the season will not be run at Jerez but will start at a later date. There is no conformation as of yet as to when the season will kick off with an amended calendar to be announced soon.

There are still ongoing investigations as to what caused the fire but Executive Director of the MotoE class – Nicolas Goubert revealed where the fire had started, saying that there was a team of “four people” in charge of charging the bikes overnight. He said: “[the team] noticed there was a prototype charging station catching fire and they tried to extinguish that [charging station]”. He goes on to say that the fire “spread very rapidly to the entire tent [which the bikes and equipment were kept in]. Energica have reportedly already begun the process of gathering the parts to build the new bikes.