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Chaz Davies has begun preparations for his much anticipated return to competitive racing action this season as the 2024 MotoE World Championship sparked into action with a three-day pre-season test at Portimao.

The Welshman is back on track more than two years after hanging up his leathers at the end of the 2021 WorldSBK Championship after agreeing to head up Aruba.it Racing’s maiden season at MotoE level.

The multiple WorldSBK title-winning operation, which is branching out into MotoE under the Aruba Cloud MotoE Racing Team, turned its first laps during three days of track time in Portugal with Davies – who last competed at Grand Prix World Championship level full-time some 19 years ago – being joined by fellow rookie team-mate Armando Pontone.

Having focused on an off-track role as rider coach with Aruba.it Racing in recent years, Davies has limited scant competitive outings to a small handful of Endurance World Championship starts. As such, he faces challenging pre-season beyond simply getting to grips with the Ducati V21L electric sports bike, which went some way to explaining a low-key start to proceedings during the test.

Peaking with a best lap of 1m 49.262secs across the entire test, Davies placed 16th out of the 18 riders on the overall timesheets, +2.3secs adrift of Hector Garzo’s 1m 46.916secs benchmark effort. The triple WorldSBK runner-up also participated in his first race simulation, but completed only five of the seven lap distance.

Héctor Garzó leads tight timesheets in Portugal

Fourth overall in 2023, Garzo returns to head up Dynavolt Intact GP’s MotoE efforts in 2024 and promptly put a fast foot forward as he commanded a three tenth margin over the competition at Portimao.

The Spaniard’s advantage notwithstanding though, it remained remarkably close behind him with just four tenths covering the remainder of the top ten.

Defending champion Mattia Casadei led the chase as he made his first appearance since switching to LCR E-Team over the winter. The Italian also led the way during the race simulation from team-mate Eric Granado.

Third on the single lap timesheets was Oscar Gutiérrez for the new Axxis-MSI team (formerly Pons Racing), ahead of inaugural MotoE World Cup champ Matteo Ferrari (Gresini) and Alessandro Zaccone (Tech3 E-Racing).

Portimao will play host to the opening round of the eight-event 2024 MotoE World Championship on 21-22.

🇵🇹 ⏱️ 2024 MotoE World Championship, Portimao | Pre-Season Testing Results [FINAL – 3 Days]