The 21st place in the timing table was not a good indicator for Miguel Oliveira on the first day of MotoGP testing in Losail. The Trackhouse Racing rider struggled to adopt a competitive speed, particularly due to time lost in the corners.
The Portuguese spoke about his difficulties to the press: ‘Today wasn’t good. I wasn’t fast, I didn’t have a good pace. I lose a lot of time in the fast corners due to the lack of bike turning. It’s basically the same feeling I had in Sepang. I need to correct that for tomorrow – at least to try to be a bit more competitive. I’m also sure that it’s not the whole bike, I need to meet halfway. But somehow we need to find a way to meet in the middle and improve. So far I’m struggling to be fast because of this, but it’s also true that we didn’t touch much on the bike’s geometry compared to Sepang. So hopefully we can have that tested for tomorrow in order to understand which path to follow.’
Regarding the origin of the problems with the Aprilia RS-GP, Oliveira mentioned that there isn’t much he understands: ‘It’s true that the main difference is the aerodynamic package, how the bike is using the air. But I can’t say much more because I really don’t know. For me, the feeling is a lack of turning and I need to improve that quickly, otherwise it will be complicated.’
The #88 also explained: ‘Essentially it is a combination between the engine brake working and it is even at the moment of the braking phase. As soon as you enter, you have this slide of the rear and then you have the push forward. And this creates some instability. It’s a fraction of a second where you are here and you turn or go wide. There are many points on the track where you can lose time here because of this. So, it is clear that this difficulty is amplified here, maybe it is not so bad in Sepang, but here it is worse, it is clearer. And we need to fix this without compromising the other things that are actually working well. How to do it, maybe it’s a little more complex. Hopefully we can solve it tomorrow’.
One day of testing is missing in Qatar. Can the problems be solved? Oliveira referred: ‘I only have some concern about the time window we have. If we get it right, it’s fantastic; if not, we can lose. We don’t have enough good hours during the test to really find out and test a lot. So, whatever we need to do, it needs to be good’.
