Miguel Oliveira had good prospects for the Qatar GP in MotoGP, but ended up in 15th position – after missing out on points in the Sprint race, although he was close to the top 12 in qualifying.
The Portuguese rider from Trackhouse Racing admitted that the round at Losail served as a lesson, explaining to SportTV what happened in his race: ‘We learned a good lesson. It was tough; in the race, we didn’t have a competitive bike for much more. Coming from that position, I knew I would struggle a bit with the Long Lap. The problem is not only the time lost doing the Long Lap, but also the position you end up in. I was in a fairly tight group fighting for the top ten, then I re-entered the track in 19th. There was a period of seven laps where I tried my best to save the tyre for the end. In the end, I pushed to try to have a better pace. But there was very little to do; I wasn’t close enough to overtake more riders and ended up in 15th. We’re not happy at all. The bike behaves more acceptably in a quick lap, but then to keep a race pace, with less grip, more laps, the bike heavier, we are still quite far away’.
Despite the disappointment in the first round of the year, Oliveira expressed confidence that he will reach the desired level: ‘Obviously, we’ll get there; it will take a little time, but we’ll get there. We have that power, Aprilia has very competent people to work on it. I don’t know where our team lies in the priorities, but I believe we are relying heavily on Aprilia, but at the same time, we are also becoming independent and following our own paths and our tuning philosophies and ideas for the bike. So, that’s our path for the future’.
Next is the Portuguese GP in Portimão, where #88 expects to have a base after the positive performance last year: ‘From there, it’s about understanding what kind of limitations we need to work on in the next race. But for now, from Qatar, it promised a lot, but the reality was different’.
Asked if he would like to go back to the 2022 version of the Aprilia RS-GP, Oliveira denied: ‘No. There was an intermediate step, which was the 2023 one, which was quite good, and I only tried it one morning in Misano – I did two or three exits and said, «I don’t want to ride this bike anymore because I won’t have this in the future, so it’s impossible». And there really was that expectation for the 2024 one. But for some reason or another, we haven’t quite fit well with the potential of the bike yet. So, I want to believe that it’s time that we need and, without a doubt, for now the data indicates just that. […]. I don’t know when the moment will come, but I think it’s with this experience that we accumulate from the races that will help us’.