In the fourth round, encouraging signs for Miguel Oliveira. The Trackhouse Racing rider finished the MotoGP Spanish GP in eighth place as the best Aprilia, also achieving his best result of the year so far.
The Portuguese confirmed that he had better feelings after trying something different on the bike during warm-up: ‘The feeling was better. We tried a small adjustment to the bike’s geometry this morning. It seems to work with the medium tire, but anyway on Friday I felt much better than with the soft one, so I think it was the right balance of grip for me‘.
Regarding the race, Oliveira initially admitted that he had no problems at the start unlike yesterday: ‘The race… I managed to have a good start, learned my lesson from yesterday and managed to deactivate my holeshot device on the way to turn 1, so everything else was a bit easier‘.
Oliveira believes that he still lacked something and made mistakes that prevented him from going further, but he is happy with the outcome: ‘I probably lacked those extra tenths per sector to be a bit faster, but I preferred to maintain the same pace and made two mistakes that cost me two places and I’m only disappointed about that. But overall I’m happy with the race, because it was a real top ten result, which after three difficult races I’m happy to finish‘.
Questioned about in what aspect he felt most comfortable with the bike, Oliveira replied: ‘I felt strong in the bike’s turning, I was managing the fast corners much better, which was a good sign. I simply gained a bit more confidence to brake hard, something I lacked during the weekend. And also the overall pace was much better, so today the bike was very good to ride‘.
