The French MotoGP Grand Prix is next for Miguel Oliveira this season. After achieving his best result of the year in Jerez about two weeks ago, the Trackhouse Racing rider looks to continue on the right track.
As he was injured at the time, #88 did not compete in Le Mans in 2023 and will therefore ride an Aprilia bike there for the first time. However, he ensured that this does not justify a different approach:
– I don’t think so. I think it’s just a matter of dealing with it in a normal way like we do every weekend. There’s nothing in particular that we need to pay attention to when we arrive and haven’t ridden the Aprilia bike in the previous season – also because it’s such a different bike anyway that the previous season experience doesn’t really matter. So, it’s just the normal approach.
After the recent test in Jerez, Oliveira will use some of the solutions found, as he revealed: ‘Yes, some things – especially suspension ideas and the rear shock absorber that we tested in Jerez, we will have here. And then we didn’t test any kind of big part that would give us a huge advantage, so we’ll leave that for another occasion. But for now, we’ll just use the suspension ideas we tested here‘.
Le Mans is a stop-and-go circuit due to the nature of the layout, but the “Falcon” believes that the Aprilia RS-GP will not have any problems: ‘I think it’s good. They see [Maverick] Viñales doing the race he did in Texas and it’s… it’s not the typical stop-and-go track because the braking points are long, but the track is also very wide. Here it’s a bit narrower – quite a bit. And you spend a lot of time braking in a straight line. I don’t think we are in as critical a situation as last season, so I hope we can be competitive. I don’t think the bike will prevent us from performing well’.
