Miguel Oliveira continues to show signs of improvement but today he once again entered the points and equaled his best result of the season – in the long race in Portimão – with a ninth place finish, but interestingly, he was further away from the top than is “usual” in Sprint races and not even the 8s penalty imposed on Fabio Quartararo “helped” the Portuguese.
Today’s race was a real chaos with many crashes that ended up playing in Oliveira’s favor in a Sprint race that this year never had a second-place finisher – Pedro Acosta – “so far” from the winner: 2.970s, while the third on the track, Quartararo, who finished more than 7s behind, made the situation even more atypical.
This means that Quartararo, initially with a difference of 7.052s, would end up being demoted to fifth, which didn’t really affect Oliveira who remained in ninth.
It is important to note that after everything that happened on the track today, with several crashes, reaching the finish line was almost a matter of survival and merit in itself, but it is equally crucial to underline that today was an atypical day with many unusual distances between the riders, and proof of this is Oliveira not gaining any positions even after a severe penalty to Quartararo which, in the end… didn’t really “shake” the Frenchman.
