Oliveira to start first race of the season from excellent fifth position on the grid

Miguel Oliveira was in good shape during the first qualifying practice of the 2013 MotoGP World Championship season. The Portuguese rider ensured the fifth spot of the grid this evening at the Losail International Circuit, stage of the Commercial Bank Grand Prix of Qatar, with a lap of 2.08’409s.

After two somewhat complicated free practices and with track conditions far from perfect, the Mahindra Racing rider found a good set-up for his MGP3O for tonight’s qualifying, having finished 1.180s from Luis Salom’s pole position.

The youngster from Alamada was very combative throughout the session, even leading in the early stages. Oliveira then dropped a little on the time sheet, but he made good use of his sprit to fight back and move to the second row of the grid with his last lap.

Miguel Oliveira: “The qualifying went quite well. We have ensured our presence on the second row of the grid and we have also considerably improved my rhythm; I was always alone on the fast laps, without any slipstream, which was very good. We will try to improve our rhythm in the warm-up, lap after lap, and I think we are now in a good position for the grid. I am very happy and proud for taking a spot on second row with such a young race project. The team is happy and so am I. So tomorrow during the race we’ll try to be among the leading group and do everything we can to get the best possible position. We also have to take into account that this is the first race in the Championship and we don’t want to start taking unnecessary risks. We want to race in an intelligent way, making no mistakes and doing our very best.”

Source: Miguel Oliveira Official Website