The start of the Italian MotoGP Grand Prix was encouraging for Miguel Oliveira, with the fourth fastest time in this afternoon’s practice at Mugello. However, there are still some uncertainties for the rest of the weekend.
Right away, the Trackhouse Racing rider explained that he still doesn’t have a solid assessment of the race pace: ‘It’s difficult to evaluate the pace because I spent a lot of time in the garage, as during the change we had a slight problem with a sensor, so it took us a bit longer to resolve that. But the pace is not that bad, I think we can see and analyze more deeply tomorrow morning and see how the pace is‘.
In another technical aspect, there is still no clear direction when it comes to tire choices: ‘It’s not easy to choose, because it seems that the soft one can give you a lot for pace in one lap, but the medium one is not that bad either and is not far off in terms of lap time. So we really don’t know. It is true that we will see more soft tires than mediums for the Sprint, but I don’t know about Sunday; Sunday will be a gamble again. So let’s see if we can do the work with the medium tomorrow and see if we can take it‘.
Aprilia showed relatively low top speeds for a circuit like Mugello, but that doesn’t concern #88: ‘No, not really. I think we haven’t had the gearbox at 100 percent yet, but we will work on that for tomorrow‘.
On the other hand, Oliveira spoke about approaching the curves: ‘Of course you can’t be too long on the curves because the turn is not as effective. But if you can go slightly longer, it doesn’t affect too much. So we need to find that compromise now, without touching too much on the changes in the curves. But I guess it will only be related to fifth and sixth gears’.
