Miguel Oliveira promised in the first qualifying session of the French MotoGP Grand Prix, but in Q2 he could not go beyond 12th place. And it was in 11th place that, hours later, he finished the Sprint race – in which he could hardly make any progress.
The Trackhouse Racing driver mentioned that he was affected by yellow flags in qualifying, while in the Sprint race there was a problem with the bike: ‘Honestly it was a good performance in Q1, but then in Q2 with my new tire I had yellow flags for three consecutive laps, so I couldn’t do much more. And then in the race it was a bit disappointing because I had some kind of problem either with the front tire, or with the front part of the bike – I really can’t say at this moment. But something was really wrong. The team is still trying to understand what happened and try to avoid it for tomorrow‘.
Asked about the consequences of the problem he mentioned, Oliveira explained: ‘Basically I had huge front-end slides, in straight braking and especially at the apex under acceleration, so I was about to crash going slow, and that’s really strange. I just tried to attack and not crash at the same time, so basically I couldn’t do anything. This morning I easily did 1m31s and this afternoon to do a lap in the low 1m32s was killing me to achieve. So, something was very wrong‘.
Rain may arrive in Le Mans this Sunday, and #88 emphasized that it is necessary to be prepared for anything: ‘Tomorrow looks very different from today, so we have to be prepared for any condition and try to adapt very quickly to whatever is on track‘.
