After the abandonment at the French MotoGP Grand Prix, Miguel Oliveira arrives at the Spanish GP in Barcelona – where he has been competitive, and finished fifth last season. A performance that the Trackhouse Racing rider certainly wants to repeat.
Asked whether, for a rider, it is more interesting to have a track where they know the grip will be decreasing, “Falcão” replied: ‘No, not really. We know that Barcelona is one of the tracks where we actually use the tire more and we need to approach it like a marathon race where we can’t attack too much in the beginning. We need to take care of tire degradation, we need to learn how we can ride and the bike setup to avoid losing so much time over the race distance – which is not easy. But we have good information from last year, especially because I was competitive, but not at the maximum potential of the bike. So, we learned some things that, of course, we will try to correct this year‘.
Regarding the data from 2023, Oliveira elaborated: ‘We have the entire report of last year’s comments. We go through them, sometimes from session to session. Especially, we extract the last comment from the race, which is the most important because it is the final set of the bike we competed with and the most valuable indications we can have are probably after the race. I had a lot of front tire degradation, we have some ideas to correct this with the bike balance. But before we start touching anything, we just need to start the weekend and see how the bike works here because it is very different from last year‘.
And, with these differences, #88 admitted that there is an element of unpredictability: ‘I hope we don’t have different problems, but we can’t predict some things. We just need to start the weekend and react to things that will probably come up during the sessions. But as I said before, the bike was very competitive here – not only last year, but also in previous years. So we just need to take it easy, not overreact or anticipate things too much and just go with the sessions’.
Oliveira’s track record in Barcelona is successful, including a MotoGP victory, but the rider doesn’t see any reason why it should be such a favorable track: ‘I have no idea, I have to be honest. I have simply been competitive in Barcelona in all classes – the same as in Valencia, it’s not my favorite track. I have been fast here, there is no particular reason for that, I see it as a very normal track. It does suit my style a bit more, but in Le Mans I was also very competitive and it’s more stop-and-go. I don’t feel like I am a rider for certain tracks. I feel like I adapt very well to all tracks’.
