Miguel Oliveira started the MotoGP season with just one point in the Qatar GP, thanks to finishing 15th in the main race. There was a feeling that there was potential for more, but things didn’t go his way.
The Trackhouse Racing pilot recalled the Losail round in an interview with SportTV: ‘Qatar was a whole weekend of “almost, almost”: almost in the top ten, almost in Q2, almost fighting for the top ten in the race. Realistically, if I hadn’t done the Long Lap, maybe I could have finished eighth, but I don’t believe I could have done better than that. It was a weekend of recovering speed – speed that we hadn’t shown in testing. Although I improved my time compared to testing, I ended up less than a tenth away from entering the top ten and as we know nowadays in MotoGP the worst place to be is there in that line in the middle of the grid. In addition to that, we don’t have an Aprilia with a very explosive start, the start itself is not a strong point on the bike, but we are very focused on improving that. Along with all that and starting in the middle, things can either go very well, or we can fall into a very gray area, which is where I fell. Even riding well and managing the tires well, I couldn’t do better than 15th‘.
Asked if there is a strategy outlined for the start, Oliveira replied: ‘No, there isn’t. It all depends on the moment. It depends a lot on our starting position and on who we have next to us. Generally, KTM and Ducati have a very good start and it becomes very difficult to fight for positions when you arrive at the first corner being overtaken. You arrive at completely different speeds and as you are being overtaken, you arrive slower and you can’t exactly brake later to compensate for that speed difference. So, it becomes a complicated job, but I am focused on doing my best turn by turn and it starts right from Friday afternoon being able to enter the top ten‘.
