Oliveira improves significantly to end second day of Valencia test among Top 10
Miguel Oliveira presented significant improvements on the second day of the Moto3 test in Valencia, his first contact with the Mahindra Racing’s Suter with which he will compete this year in the MotoGP World Championship. The Portuguese youngster shaved almost four seconds of his best time from yesterday.
With good weather and yesterday’s problem detected and solved, the rider from Almada presented a much stronger pace which placed him among the top 10.
With a time of 1.41’902s, registered in the third session of the day, the Portuguese ensured the 10th place on the combined time sheets, 1.734s adrift from Maverick Viñales’ fastest time of the day.
“The second day started, once again, with problems with the gearbox. We were having problems shifting gears, but we ended up understanding what was causing them and we solved it,” said Miguel Oliveira who “made a few adjustments to the clutch at the end of the day to have it working the way I like.”
With more track time, the Almada rider had the opportunity to enhance the knowledge of his Suter: “We managed to make more laps, several of the them clean and without problems, to better understand the bike and the track conditions in order to be faster. We collected more data to be analysed by the team and tomorrow we should try some new stuff with the chassis.”
Although aware of the work that still lies ahead, Oliveira was happy with what has been achieved so far: “Considering this is the second time we ride with the bike, it’s not bad at all. We are 1,7s from the front, which is very positive for the second day of the season. There’s still much time ahead, it’s the first test of the year, and there’s still a lot of work to be done from now on.”
Tomorrow Miguel Oliveira will be back at the track for the last of the three-day test in Valencia, in which he expects the weather to stay as good as today in order to conclude the work schedule for this first Moto3 test of the season.
Source: Miguel Oliveira Official Website
