After a DNF at the MotoGP French GP, Miguel Oliveira heads to the Spanish GP in Barcelona, where he has previously been competitive, finishing fifth last season. The Trackhouse Racing rider is keen to replicate and improve on that performance.
When asked if it’s more interesting for a rider to tackle a track where grip continually decreases, «Falcão» replied: ‘No, not really. We know that Barcelona is one of the tracks where we actually use more the tyre and we need to do like a marathon-like race where we cannot really push too much at the beginning. We need to take care about the tyre degradation, we need to learn how we can ride and set-up the bike to not lose so much lap time over the race distance – which is not easy. But we have good information from last year, especially because I was competitive, but not to the fullest of the bike’s potential. So we learned a couple of things that we are of course looking forward to fix this year’.
Discussing the relevance of the data from 2023, Oliveira elaborated: ‘We have all the report from the comments last year. We go through them, sometimes session by session. Especially we take out the last comment from the race, which is the most important because is the final package bike which we have raced and the most valuable feedback we can have is probably after the race. I had a lot of front tyre degradation, we have a couple of ideas to fix it with the bike’s balance. But before starting to touch something, we just need to start the weekend and see how this bike works here because is so much different from the last year’.
Acknowledging these differences, Oliveira admitted there’s an element of unpredictability: ‘I hope not to get different problems, but we cannot predict some of the things. We just need to get on with the weekend and react to the things that probably will come up during the sessions. But as I said before, the bike was fairly competitive here – not only last year, but also in the years before. So we just need to take it easy and not overreact or anticipate too much the things and just go along with the sessions’.
Oliveira has a strong record at Barcelona, including a MotoGP victory, but he doesn’t find a specific reason why the track suits him so well: ‘I have no idea, I have to be honest. I just have been competitive in Barcelona in every class – the same as Valencia, is not my favorite track. I was fast, there is no particular reason for it, I see it as a very normal track. For sure it suits my style a bit more, but in Le Mans I also was competitive and is more stop-and-go. I don’t feel I’m a rider of certain tracks. I feel I adapt quite well to everty track’.