Helbiz Racing announced its participation in theeSkootr Championship, the future world championship dedicated to electric scooters. It will be a whole new world to discover, with Helbiz presenting the S1-X model for racing at EICMA 2021. And it will all be new for the team manager chosen by the publicly traded company as well, namely Gian Maria Gabbiani.
Gabbiani has really driven everything in his career: cars, motorcycles, boats. Of every type and performance. So it’s not so surprising to see him involved in a scooter project. Which, in fact, have not existed from the point of view of competitive sports until today. The championship will start in 2022, but the Helbiz Racing Team project has already started for some time. FormulaPassion interviewed Gian Maria atEICMA to find out a little more about this championship, which mixes the passion for speed with the themes of micro-mobility.
Gian Maria, you have guided everything in your career: but this is a completely new project.
“Yes, that’s right, I’ve had very different experiences in my career. But this time it is something very special. The project is very innovative, I say this as a pilot and also in the guise of my new role. This is a challenge for me too, because going to the other side of the wall is a novelty. We are now selecting drivers who could be hired, calculating that one of the rules of the eSkootr Championship is the presence of three drivers per team, one of which will necessarily be female.“.
The driver selection process will be interesting, because it is a completely new sport. How are you managing it?
“We will have an NBA-style draft, with drivers prioritized. We will try to have a one hundred percent Italian team, considering that mechanics and engineers already come from our country. The pool from which to draw for the drivers will be enormous, it is one of the greatest cool things in the championship. The will is to mix disciplines as much as possible. We had a test race behind closed doors, which was spectacular, and there was a Swiss snowboarder who was really scary, with his own riding style. The styles will mix, people will come from bmx, motocross, track bikes, surfing. There is a high potential to find competitive athletes, wider than in classic motorcycle races“.
What will the races be like?
“Passing one hundred per hour and above all 55 degrees in the lean is effective, seeing the riders elbow to elbow side by side in three is really a lot of stuff. The races will be a great show, they will be held in the city and this will further increase the scenic effect“.
Will racing scooters also bring benefits to commonly used scooters?
“It must be said that today we are already in the second generation of street scooters. The manufacturers are already changing the angle of the handlebars, before they were almost perpendicular to the ground, and they were also narrower. There is now greater maneuverability and ease of driving. In the next two to three years, with driving on the track, the technical development will change a lot, certainly starting from the geometries“.
Will racing give you a chance to see scooters with different eyes? They are often in the eye of the storm for safety reasons.
“We are thinking of creating a sort of civic education, interfacing with schools and with the new generations because I often see, as a user of the rental product, scooters used by two people without a helmet, or people trying impossible tricks. Calculating that this device is not suitable for certain evolutions, people are regularly on the ground. We have to work upstream, explain that this product is innovative in its micromobility function, and certainly not to participate in the X-Games. The championship will serve to give those kids a goal, in order to unleash the passion for speed ‘on the track’“.
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