Miguel Oliveira continues his adaptation process to the new Aprilia RS-GP and today, on the last day of testing in Sepang, he showed an interesting pace but “failed” in terms of attacking the times. The rider reveals that he is still missing something, and that today he missed the time window, in terms of temperature, for that same attack.
The Portuguese rider was one of the most prominent in terms of aerodynamic solutions with Aprilia and has already been able to discard some, which should facilitate his work in Losail, he believes: ‘We are getting somewhere and certainly [before arriving] in Qatar we have already eliminated half of the things and there we will have a more simplified work, but we still have to test some things again. Overall, I am happier with the sensations on the bike’.
He then spoke about his performance on the track and admitted the lack of a more competitive lap time, explaining afterwards that he did not do it at the right time: ‘I did good laps, it is true that I still lack rhythm for a lap, the improvement is not enough to be there, to be competitive. There are different reasons for that: today I completely missed the time window in terms of temperature to make an attack on the times, which was much easier. I did it late and then we went back and forth with the settings and then I stayed with the same bike and same settings until the end of the day and that helped me. In the end, I only had one tire available for the rear, I repeated the lap time again, the ideal time a little faster but… it’s that feeling that you evolve and ride well, the rhythm is good but the speed in one lap is not there’.
About his “weapon” for this year, he says he will need a few more days to feel more comfortable: ‘The bike has a lot of potential. Aleix [Espargaró] immediately felt very comfortable on the bike while Maverick [Viñales] and I had a lot of difficulties getting there, and I think we still need a few more days to have the bike completely adapted to our riding style.’
