Miguel Oliveira was on track to score points in the Sprint race of the MotoGP Catalan GP, but a crash three laps before the end forced him to retire. The Portuguese rider from Trackhouse Racing expressed his frustration about the incident.
Oliveira shared his thoughts with the press: ‘There is not much to say about today. I had a good start, I was in the points on the Sprint, which was not bad. I lost the front quite late at [turn] 5. That’s all that happened’.
The tyres played a significant role in Oliveira’s struggle, as he explained: ‘I still haven’t heard about front pressures. It felt like the front tyre had a really high pressure. I don’t know if that’s why I crashed, but we’ll get into that later. In general it didn’t felt amazing in the front, and then the rear [tyre] started to drop in the last four laps. Definetely we have to have a look for tomorrow, but I guess everyone else’s choices for the rear tyre will be slightly different from today’.
The #88 elaborated on why the crash was particularly frustrating: ‘I was frustrated about my crash because I wasn’t attacking on the brakes and I didn’t lost it on the brakes; I lost in the apex – which was really frustrating, because I was a bit conservative and not trying to attack there. But still wasn’t enough to save a crash at [turn] 5’.
Regarding his qualifying session, where he only managed 15th place, Oliveira commented: ‘The qualifying was difficult – less than a tenth to go through and then four tenths to pole position, so it was quite tight. The lap record is not enough today to go through, quite competitive times’.