The MotoGP test day at Mugello was affected by rain, preventing riders and teams from carrying out their planned work. Miguel Oliveira (Trackhouse Racing/Aprilia), who needs to make clear progress, still completed seven laps and is currently among the nine fastest riders.
According to the Portuguese rider, the weather conditions were a hindrance to testing what was scheduled: ‘There was something useful, but we couldn’t get to it. Because of the track conditions, it didn’t make sense to just go out and without being on the acceptable lap time window to test anything because was purely performance-related. So as you can imagine is quite hard to do it when the track is not in good conditions. We have to cut the day a bit short. I did a couple of laps on the rain, but it had no meaning’.
Regarding how important this test day was, Oliveira said: ‘I was needing. We had a couple of ideas; after analyzing the data yesterday we saw clearly why I struggled in the race to turn the bike and had a lots of front sliding, and didn’t help me to turn. We wanted to get the opportunity today to get that fixed or at least try to understand the direction to go. So, yeah, today was an important day’.
The rain also wasn’t much help for #88 to test the bike’s electronics settings, as he stated: ‘I was already quite happy with the electronics adjustments that we have as a base for the bike and when I went out obviously we tested that again. But let’s say we didn’t need to dedicate the whole day on the rain conditions to test anything specific about the electronics’.