Approximately a year ago, Miguel Oliveira left the Portuguese MotoGP Grand Prix in an inglorious way, when he was hit by Marc Márquez in the early stages of the main race. At the time, he suffered an injury that kept him off the tracks for a few weeks, in addition to being deprived of a potential good result, but nothing affects him currently.
In an interview with SportTV, the Portuguese rider assured that this incident is in the past and he holds no grudge against his opponent: ‘It has to be part of the past. It was completely a racing incident. In my mind, things were closed at the medical center, he came to apologize and there was nothing to do. I saw the images and things were as they were. Obviously, it hurt everyone, but it hurt me much more as I took the hit and psychologically knowing that I had a weekend and a golden opportunity to fight for a good position and not being able to do it because of an incident with a rider, obviously left me very upset. But honestly, it’s water under the bridge and I have had much more to worry about than the incident with Marc Márquez, with all due respect‘.
Asked if the fall at the Portuguese GP is still present at a mental level, Oliveira assured that it is not: ‘No, zero. Things ended for me on that day. Portimão is a circuit where I already have some laps and quite a few falls. I have fallen in many places here and obviously it doesn’t even cross my mind to revisit a moment. Falls are momentary things; no matter how big the physical impact is, the psychological damage is almost always nil because we always try to analyze in detail what happened. And especially when it’s something for which you’re not really to blame for the fall, you think even less. So it’s not something that affects me at all. Obviously, later, last year when I came back with the shoulder injury, being debilitated, it crossed my mind at some moments that things could happen again. But I have had many races since then, I have touched other riders myself’.
