Electric vehicles are not generally associated with many things, such as excitement, or noise, or entertainment, or speed. They’re certainly not associated with a term like ‘hooliganism’, and yet in the MotoAmerica Super Hooligan race last weekend in Daytona, Energica made a little bit of history.
It may have been an all-American, twin-cylinder Indian FTR up front taking the race win, in the hands of Tyler O’Hara, in both outings for the Super Hooligans in Daytona, a little further down the order it was possible to notice some futuristic silence among the jurassic twin-cylinder rumble.
The silence came from Stefano Mesa’s Energica Eva Ribelle RS, which found itself in the top 10 in both races thanks to the Colombian rider’s abilities. Mesa’s seventh-place finish in the first race meant history was made, as his Energica Eva Ribelle RS became the first all-electric bike to finish in the top 10 of a MotoAmerica Super Hooligan race. In the second race, Mesa went a couple of spots better still, and put the Eva Ribelle RS in the top five.
Energica’s prominence has increased in recent years in part thanks to its involvement in the MotoE World Cup, which has been a support series to the MotoGP World Championship since 2019.
The MotoE World Cup becomes the MotoE World Championship for 2023, and the Energica Ego has been replaced by the Ducati V21L as the series’ spec’ motorcycle.
One of the issues of electric motorcycles in racing has been the idea of integrating them with combustion bikes, which can be balanced against each other via displacement and cylinder number, for example. Balancing combustion bikes against electric bikes becomes complicated, because the parameters which can be adjusted in regulations to balance combustion bikes do not apply to electric bikes. This is an issue in motocross, where classes are defined by engine displacement (250cc and 450cc), and regulators are not yet certain how electric bikes, such as the Stark Varg or Flux Primo, will fit into that framework.
The MotoAmerica Super Hooligan races at Daytona were not especially long races, only six laps, but Mesa and Energica proved there that it is possible to have competitive racing between electric bikes and combustion bikes.
