Eric Granado held off Bradley Smith to double up on wins in the MotoE finale at Valencia, while Matteo Ferrari’s fifth place was enough to secure the inaugural series championship.
Pole-man Granado once again lost out to Smith at the start, the Brit shooting off into an early lead that he needed to convert to his maiden series win if he wanted to take the title away from Ferrari.
Hector Garzo was eliminated from title contention after being disqualified from his second place achieved in Saturday’s first race after it was found he had raced with illegal tyre pressures on his Tech 3 machine, leaving only Smith with a chance at stealing the title from Ferrari.
Granado was delayed as he tried to fend off Ferrari’s early challenge for second, and by the time he had broken away was faced with over a second of clear track ahead to the charging Smith.
The Avintia pilot got his head down though and quickly began to eat into the One Energy racer’s advantage, closing to within a few tenths of Smith with four laps remaining.
He remained behind across the final couple of laps, deciding to strike into Turn 8. He made the move stick, although Smith dived past into the next hairpin, running wide as a result and allowing Granado to run him out wide.
Smith wasn’t done yet though, and made an impossibly late move down the inside of the final turn in one last ditch attempt to secure victory.
His bravery went unrewarded though as he ran wide, with Granado gratefully cutting back underneath to cross the line first ahead of Smith, while Garzo fought back to claim third four seconds behind.
Alex De Angelis managed to defeat champion elect Ferrari in their own exiting battle for fourth, the pair swapping places several times before the Pramac rider finally made the move stick at Turn 8 with a couple tours remaining.
Fifth was enough for Ferrari though, and he secured the inaugural MotoE world cup title by 11 points over Smith.
Mike Di Meglio completed his rather disappointing second half of the year-having led the championship after scoring victory at the second race in Austria-with sixth, while Sete Gibernau closed out his brief racing return in seventh spot.
Mattia Casadei brought his SIC58 Energica bike home eighth ahead of Nico Terol, with Jesko Raffin rounding out the top ten on the sole Dynavolt machine.
