Garzo & Tulovic set course for successful season opener
In the first qualifying session of the year, Hector Garzo and Lukas Tulovic of the Dynavolt Intact GP MotoE Team secured fourth place on the grid on row two and eighth on row three for the promising first two rounds of the 2024 season at the breathtaking Autodromo Internacional do Algarve in Portimao.
Before the first laps counted towards the official timings, all 18 riders in the 2024 FIM MotoE World Championship were given another three fifteen-minute practice sessions on Thursday to get themselves in even better shape after the shortened pre-season and limited testing opportunities. However, rain once again thwarted the teams' plans, but at least Lukas Tulovic was able to gain more experience with his electric bike in the wet.
Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, Hector Garzo set the best top speed of 264.0km/h on Friday morning, but after the overnight rain, which washed a lot of sand from the air onto the track, he took his time to study the prevailing conditions and familiarise himself with his Ducati V21L machine. After a sixth place in P1 and an eighth place in the second practice session, the Spaniard went straight into Q2. In these groundbreaking 15 minutes of Qualifying 2, the 25-year-old improved to fourth place, from where he will lead the second row of the grid into the two sprint races on Saturday. Even though he was held up several times in the final metres of the session, Garzo was only 0.293s behind the Brazilian pole setter Eric Granado.
For the German Lukas Tulovic, there was a small diversions via Q1 into the all-important Qualifying 2, where he played with precise timing and slipstreaming alongside his Dynavolt Intact GP MotoE team-mate in order to position himself as far forward as possible on tomorrow's starting grids. In the end, his 1'47.209 on the 4.59 km long Portuguese dream track was not enough to achieve his personal goal. Nevertheless, the third row of the grid offers the MotoE returnee a very strong starting position for the two 7-lap races, which start on Saturday at 13:15 (CET) and 17:10 (CET).
Results
P1
1. Alessandro ZACCONE/ ITA – 2'01.198
2. Lukas TULOVIC/ GER – 2'01.309 (+0.111)
3. Jordi TORRES/ SPA – 2'01.473 (+0.275)
6. Hector GARZO/ SPA – 2'02.527 (+1.348)
P2
1. Mattia CASADEI/ ITA – 1'47.389
2. Nicolas SPINELLI/ ITA – 1'47.585 (+0.196)
3. Alessandro ZACCONE/ ITA – 1'47.630 (+0.241)
8. Hector GARZO/ SPA – 1'48.132 (+0.743)
9. Lukas TULOVIC/ GER – 1'48.192 (+0.803)
Q1
1. Miquel PONS/ SPA – 1'47.213
2. Lukas TULOVIC/ GER – 1'47.406 (+0.193)
3. Matteo FERRARI/ ITA – 1'47.620 (+0.407)
Q2
1. Eric GRANADO/ BRA – 1'46.470
2. Nicolas SPINELLI/ ITA – 1'46.537 (+0.067)
3. Mattia CASADEI/ ITA – 1'46.586 (+0.116)
4. Hector GARZO/ SPA – 1'46.763 (+0.293)
8. Lukas TULOVIC/ GER – 1'47.209 (+0.739)
