Miguel Oliveira finally achieved something he had been seeking for a long time – direct qualification for the second qualifying session, thanks to a top ten finish in Friday’s practice. In Mugello, at the Italian GP, he set the fourth-fastest time this afternoon.
Despite being pleased with the first day at Mugello, the Portuguese rider from Trackhouse Racing acknowledged that his lap could have been even better: ‘It was okay, we did a good job this afternoon. We made a change at the beginning of the practice that really helped me to be a bit faster – especially in corner entry. And then I had the two time attacks, they went well, especially the second one was really a nice lap – not perfect, I felt like I could’ve rode a little bit cleaner. Anyway, the lap came, so I’m happy about that. I think it’s the first time in the season in the top ten on Friday, so I’m happy about that for sure’.
Not everything went smoothly for Oliveira, as he made a wrong choice in the morning’s free practice but then managed to recover successfully – with his bike performing much better than at the Catalan GP:
– We tried to understand what happened in Barcelona. Today in the morning we went on the direction that we didn’t follow in Barcelona and it was completely wrong, so came back to our bike this afternoon. And then we just adjuested the bike a little bit more and everything started to work a little bit better especially with the new tyres and that’s it. The bike is the bike. But to be honest it’s working much better here than it was working in Barcelona, so at least we could be competitive and that’s good.