Miguel Oliveira was three laps away from scoring points in the Sprint race of the Catalunya MotoGP Grand Prix. However, he ended up crashing out at turn five in Barcelona, much to his understandable frustration.
The Trackhouse Racing Portuguese rider didn’t hide his feelings when speaking to the press: ‘There’s not much to say about today. I had a good start, was in the points in the Sprint, which wasn’t bad. I lost the front very late in turn five. That’s all that happened,’ he said.
The tires didn’t make Oliveira’s life easy, as he explained himself: ‘I haven’t heard about the front pressures yet. It seemed like the front tire had too much pressure. I don’t know if that’s why I crashed, but we’ll look into it later. Overall, the front didn’t feel great, and then the rear tire started to break in the last four laps. We definitely have to look into that for tomorrow, but I think everyone else’s choices for the rear tire will be slightly different from today.’
As for why the crash was particularly frustrating, the rider explained: ‘I was frustrated by my crash because I wasn’t attacking on braking and I didn’t lose it on braking; I lost it on the apex – which was really frustrating because I was being a bit conservative and trying not to attack there. But it still wasn’t enough to prevent a crash at turn five‘.
Regarding the qualification in which he did not go beyond 15th, Oliveira commented: ‘The qualification was difficult – less than a tenth to pass and then four tenths to the pole position, so it was very tight. The record lap today is not enough to pass, very competitive times‘.
