Rookie Oliveira astonishes with 6th-fastest time in final Qatar practice, Moncayo 10th
The Team Andalucía Banca-Cívica continues to work towards the qualifying session tomorrow while the two riders are improving their laptimes and develop their official Aprilias.
In the 45 minutes of the third and final practice at the Losail International Circuit both Miguel Oliveira and Alberto Moncayo focused on further work on the development of their bikes and step by step the two have improved their times.
Miguel Oliveira, who is proven to be a very fast rider, is taking the new challenge in strides and improved his laptime by more than one second in each session. The Portuguese had two accidents without consequences due to dirt on the track, losing the rear of the bike.
For his part Alberto Moncayo is also improving step by step, finishing with his laptime of 2’09 .527 the top ten. He is calm and knows that the time to achieve results is the qualifying tomorrow.
Miguel Oliveira, 6 º (2’09 .171)
“Yesterday I knew that we could improve today, because we were very clear which improvements we had to make and we succeeded. Gradually I was more comfortable with the circuit and I found the better lines, so I think tomorrow we can also improve a bit. The only negative thing today is that I crashed a few times – and I wasn’t pushing! – but in Doha it is like that when you go a little off the line, the track is very dirty and you crash very easily. In any case they’ve been small crashes, unimportant, which also helped me learn.
Tomorrow we’ll try to find a good rhythm for the race and I think we can improve on the laptime from today.”
Alberto Moncayo, 10 (2’09 .527)
“We are working on the bike because we have a small problem in the fast corners and this greatly limited the laptimes I achieved. We also changed the engine because we reached the mileage limit on the previous one and I didn’t want to risk a crash, so we are also putting some time into this aspect. Tomorrow in the qualifying I’ll try to have all these issues resolved and hopefully improve my time a lot.”
Source: Team Machado