Good work doesn’t quite pay off for Oliveira and Moncayo
Miguel Oliveira and Alberto Moncayo have done a great job during practice for the Italian Grand Prix which unfortunately has not been reflected in the grid positions. Once again the rain has come at the worst moment and the Team Andalucía – Banca Cívica – Diputación de Cádiz riders could not complete a session in which they were looking very strong. Miguel will start from 11th position while Alberto will start from 16th.
Since the first practice yesterday both riders have done a brilliant work which showed in the good results in the third free practice for the Italian GP, but when it was time for the qualifying a dark cloud appeared over the Mugello circuit and, as is almost customary this season, unloaded its rain on the track at the wrong time.
Miguel Oliveira has focused on testing the feeling of his left arm without a risk. He felt more confident and less pain than yesterday, so he was able to ride very fast, but the real test will be tomorrow with the many race laps and Miguel hopes to do a great start which puts him in a good position to defend during the race.
Alberto Moncayo was stuck in the qualifying session with a group of very wild riders, passing on the straight roughly but going slow through the corners, which prevented him from making a comeback as he would have liked and despite having done a good job all weekend he was relegated on the grid to 16th place which will force him to do a very good start tomorrow.
MIGUEL OLIVEIRA 11º: “Today things have gone very well in the morning. We went out to test how my arm responded and I managed to go pretty fast, I feel better than yesterday, but after several laps I start to feel quite a lot of pain. Tomorrow I will try to do a good start and I hope to be in the second group of the race, but I do not want to risk too much because a crash now would slow down the recovery of my arm and the goal is to be 100% quickly. The qualifying session was not easy, because the rain only allowed us to ride four laps and two of them I used to run in the engine. Then I pushed to get a good laptime and I felt comfortable on the bike which has a very good setup and gives me a good feeling. Tomorrow I hope to ride with my head, thinking a lot about the movements during the race and if I finish in the top ten I think it would be a good result.”
Alberto Moncayo 16º: “It was not a good qualifying session although I went out early and started to push very hard to get a good lap before it started to rain. I’ve been in a group that was very messy and I could not complete one lap as I would have liked. I start tomorrow from 16th position, which is a shame because we are doing a good job on this circuit and I aspired to more. The practice yesterday and this morning were still very positive, with a setting of the bike which allows me to ride very fast. Tomorrow I will try to do a start like I did at the French GP and try to hang on to the lead group to have a chance to get a great result.”
Source: Team Machado
