Energica, Dorna and Enel have released a joint statement which states the cause of fire that destroyed the MotoE paddock at Jerez.
The MotoE teams and riders gathered at Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto on Wednesday for the start of the three-day pre-season test. The first day action was done with Avintia’s Eric Granado on top from Ajo Motorsport’s Niki Tuuli and Tech 3 E-Racing’s Hector Garzo.
After they left the scene in the night to end the Day 1 work, at 12:15AM on Thursday, a fire broke in the E-Paddock, which houses all the 18 Energica Ego bikes and other valuable materials of the teams and the riders.
The fire destroyed most of the material as the remaining two days was cancelled with Dorna then further cancelling the inagural season’s Jerez round for May 5, which was to take place as a support race to the MotoGP’s Spanish GP.
More importantly, the message from the organisers and the teams was that they will rebuild and race for certainty in 2019 with a revised calendar to be released at a later stage. A joint statement has been released since then to reveal the cause of the fire.
While the local police continues its investigation, the source of the fire has been identified as a short circuit inside the paddock which ignited the ‘high-density battery’ – part of the ‘high-performance charger’ used for the MotoE events.
The new statement reads:
“Although we are waiting for the final conclusion of the investigation by local police, initial evidence regarding the cause of the fire at the E-paddock of the FIM Enel MotoE World Cup at the Circuito de Jerez-Angel Nieto on March 14 seems to point to a short circuit as the main cause of the incident.
“The source of the short circuit has yet to be identified but, once the fire broke out, it ignited the high-density battery which is part of the high-performance charger used at MotoE events. The motorbikes were not connected to the charging infrastructure at the time the fire began.”