Miguel Oliveira had to retire from the main race of the French MotoGP due to a breakdown in Trackhouse Racing’s Aprilia. At the time, he had good prospects of finishing in the top ten, but for the first time in 2024, he left a round without any points.
The Portuguese rider explained that he had a problem with the exhaust early on, which he still didn’t fully understand, but he continued on track until it became unsustainable:
– The race was not too bad. I was having a good pace, but soon into the race I had a technical issue with the exhaust, and then I continued for about ten laps more or less with this problem to a point where it caused me a proper limit to the performance in terms of how the electronics was managing engine braking, torque delivery, etc.. So I had to retire the bike to not do further damage. At that point I didn’t knew what it was, but for sure by the difference of the sound I could notice that was something related to the exhaust. The team is still investigating it and together we’ll see what we can do to avoid this in the future.
Regarding the cause of the issue, Oliveira said there are no conclusions possible yet: ‘It’s too early to point any finger to the reason why it happened. I think we need some time to really understand what went wrong actually. The team did essentially the same job as we did before. We’ll have to wait to analyze a bit more’.