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Passed Q1, flew to Q2, landed on the fourth row: Miguel Oliveira starts 11th at the Thai Grand Prix

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Passed Q1, flew to Q2, landed on the fourth row: Miguel Oliveira starts 11th at the Thai Grand Prix

A good qualifying, a great start, a race that did not bring the conditions for a better result but equaled the second highest result of the season. After several months in Europe, the move from MotoGP to Asia brought Miguel Oliveira back to ride in the top positions like his KTM teammate Brad Binder and the Portuguese’s main objective was to maintain this pace to continue adding points that would allow him to climb positions in the general classification of the 2022 World Cup. However, after good indications in FP1, The first day did not go smoothly.

Falcão flew again for the second best result of the season: Miguel Oliveira finished fifth in the Japanese Grand Prix

After starting seventh in the first free practice session in Thailand, 0.233 behind the fastest on the track (Johann Zarco), the Portuguese finished FP2 with the fifth record and the eighth combined time of the opening day, in a result that in other routes could be positive but what about turned out to be lower than expected by Almada’s pilot, as he himself would assume in the end.

Miguel Oliveira admits that eighth place in practice is below expectations

“The afternoon session was more complicated, the wind picked up a bit more, in the fastest stage it was more difficult to make a faster trajectory, but we managed to have a good time. I’m happy with the top 10 in the combined but a little below what I expected in terms of pace. There is still work to do, some things on the bike that can be improved to make me feel more comfortable and competitive in terms of race pace. This afternoon we will go into more detail about that, and tomorrow [sábado] we will outline a plan to improve more”, he commented this Friday in statements to Sport TV.

“I’ve been trying a few things on the adjustment of the clutch engine brake which ended up not working but there was no time to improve during the session. I had to do the shoot with something I didn’t like and it didn’t work. At the exit of the last corner we lost a bit of acceleration, our bike is not the fastest. In the rest of the sectors, at high speed, we managed to recover some time and brake late. I felt a lot of places where the bike slides, especially when straight, it still slides a lot. We are not 100%, but I think that, with the work we are going to do, we will be more comfortable and competitive. Three tenths seems little, but in this circuit it is being a lot, They already put me in eighth and we have to look for more time, ”he added about a day in which he even went down.

This morning, early in the morning in Lisbon, the improvement targets have been lowered even further, to the point of have failed direct entry in the second trimester as had happened in the last three races with an 11th record among the combined times that left him on the doorstep of direct passage to the discussion of the first four rows of the grid. Contrary to what happened with Brad Binder, fourth best in FP3, Miguel Oliveira did not manage to enter the best and also knew that he would have strong rivals in Q1, between the Aprilias of Aleix Espargaró and Maverick Viñales or the Honda of the always unpredictable. Marc Márquez.

The fourth and final free practice session had Miguel Oliveira in the top ten for the most part, ahead of most of the drivers he would discuss access to Q2 with, but it was Q1 where all the attention was focused, with Marc Márquez opening with 1.30.343 in what has been his best lap of the entire weekend in Thailand and that may be enough for him to win one of the two places to fight for the first 12 places. The Portuguese opened with a modest time at a high 1.31 but then jumped up to second place with a 1.30.682, ahead of Aleix Espargaró until the almost immediate response of the Aprilia rider to recover that last position of passage to Q2.

There would still be room for surprises before the first stop for all drivers, with Cal Crutchlow showing what he hadn’t revealed so far to jump into second place in Q1. In the second entry, Miguel Oliveira dropped to sixth position with the climbs of Viñales and Morbidelli but a canyon lap in which he did the first three sectors faster than Marc Márquez and finished just 0.061 behind the Spaniard to settle in second position , with no response from Aleix Espargaró and the rest of the company. With a time already close to download from 1.30, the Portuguese secured another consecutive presence in Q2.

Contrary to what happened with Márquez, Miguel Oliveira preferred not to go out on the track at the beginning of Q2, seeing in his boxes what was brewing in a fight that once again had Jorge Martín and Johann Zarco as the main protagonists in private. duel between Quartararo and Pecco Bagnaia for the best position at the start, and he went out in search of his best version five minutes from the end of Q2, he moralized with this last lap of Q1 that showed another version of the Portuguese in Thailand. He did a slow lap to have time for two fast ones before the checkered flag, he started by placing ninth ahead of Brad Binder. but dropped to 11th place, failing to improve later on the last attempt of the day. Up front, Italian Marco Bezzecchi got a pole position surprise (the first in MotogGP) ahead of Jorge Martín and Pecco Bagnaia, with Quartararo, Zarco and Enea Bastianini in the second row.

Source: Observadora

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