The Sprint race in Austin is over and Miguel Oliveira finished in a good position by launching an attack on Brad Binder to finish in 11th place after spending most of the time in 12th. A consistent effort from the Portuguese.
Everything is ready for the start of the MotoGP Sprint race in Austin, a very special location for Trackhouse Racing, which has its home GP here.
The Portuguese had a tough task ahead, starting the race from the fifth row of the grid, alongside Álex Rins and his teammate, Raúl Fernández, after qualifying in 14th place. Oliveira, like the other riders, had a medium tire on the front and a soft one on the rear of his bike.
At the start of the race, Oliveira lost two positions but quickly regained his starting position and then improved by one more place. Fabio Di Giannantonio went off track with a problem on his bike, which promoted Oliveira to 12th after one lap, behind Brad Binder and ahead of Fabio Quartararo.
After two laps, Oliveira remained in 12th place with Binder 0.366s ahead and Quartararo 0.608s behind #88. The following lap, Marco Bezzecchi overtook Quartararo and became Oliveira’s main pursuer, with the gap between them quickly increasing to just over two tenths, but then increasing to half a second shortly after.
On the other hand, Oliveira was further behind Binder, with the gap between them now at 0.775s and increasing, after the South African was superior to the Portuguese in all sectors of the track.
However and after four laps, Oliveira’s best so far, the gap decreased to 0.581s and the Trackhouse Racing rider was now faster than his former teammate and in the space of one lap gained more than two tenths on #33, Bezzecchi was 0.300s behind Oliveira.
The race was now exactly halfway:
With six laps to go, this was the third consecutive lap by Oliveira to improve, thus putting the gap at 0.333s to Binder and at the same time distancing himself, albeit slightly, from Bezzecchi, now at 0.810s.
In the following two laps Oliveira remained in the same position and was 0.494s behind Binder, with Bezzecchi still as the main pursuer at 0.569s.
Two laps from the end Bezzecchi was on the attack and had never been so close to Oliveira as at this stage, with 0.182s separating the Trackhouse Racing rider and the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team rider. Interestingly, Binder was also closer than ever, at 0.252s.
At the start of the last lap, everything seemed to indicate that 12th place would hardly escape Oliveira but… it was not like that: it was better! Oliveira launched a final attack on Binder and in the end managed to finish just outside the top ten, in 11th place.
And so the race ended:
