Before the MotoGP Americas GP, Miguel Oliveira had the opportunity to visit the headquarters of Trackhouse Racing – including the NASCAR team, one of the main motor racing championships in the United States of America.
The MotoGP rider spoke about that moment: ‘The visit to Charlotte was unbelievable. We definitely had a good perspective of what NASCAR competition is really like and I was positively surprised by it. I drove the NASCAR car for a pit stop, so that already made my day good‘.
And this experience showed Oliveira a complexity about NASCAR that he was unaware of, as he admitted: ‘For me it was like drivers getting into a car and driving left turns all the time. That was really it for me, I had no idea about the complexity of car balance, car aerodynamics, and how little they can do to the car technically; but at the same time how big the work is for the teams in terms of dismantling the chassis, assembling all the parts together, measuring everything down to the smallest detail. And for the drivers as well, we drove in the simulator and you can definitely feel the difficulty of being competitive here‘.
The Portuguese also said: ‘It is true that when you have an internal perspective of the sport you understand what it means and you understand that it is not as simple as it seems on television. We could use a bit of that in MotoGP as well. I believe that people who watch us live can see that it is difficult, but not from home. I think nowadays it seems too easy from home‘.
