This weekend, Miguel Oliveira faces his home round, the Portuguese Grand Prix. The rider won at Portimão when MotoGP first visited there in 2020, but he doesn’t expect to be able to fight for that result again this year.
The Trackhouse Racing rider commented in a press conference: ‘It’s a different situation. Coming from average results like my race in Qatar to come here and say I’m ready to challenge for the victory maybe it’s a little bit too ambitious, but I know exactly what I’m capable of doing. Nowadays the grid in MotoGP is very particular. You can be from 12th to first just in a split of a second. Everything is possible, I don’t want to create myself any limitations, but also I don’t want to create too much expectation. I’m still adapting to the bike, it’s true, but I feel we are doing steps in the good direction and hopefully this wekend straightaway on Friday we can show that we have the speed to be in the top ten. And then obviously all the complexity of qualifying well and doing the race we need to overcome those challenges, to really see what we can do in terms of results both on Saturday and Sunday’.
Oliveira then said: ‘For sure riding a bike is about feeling, and when you feel good, when you feel comfortable everything comes without too much effort and of course that it’s possible to do with any bike. It’s not that just happened that that year everything clicked without much problems or having to work too much with the bike. But every year we come here we are riding faster and faster, so we need to be up to speed. Last year even if it was my first race with Aprilia, we’ve tested before and that was a huge advantage for me and the fact that I was fast gave me good indications. Let’s see this season, I come here open-minded, I know we can do good, so we just need to perform at the exact moment’.