Tough race ahead for Oliveira after difficult qualifying session in Austin

After a promising start yesterday at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) nothing could predict that Miguel Oliveira was up for a quite difficult Saturday, be it on the last free practice or in the Qualifying for the second round of the Moto3 World Championship. Reality, however, proved to be hard on the young Portuguese, who had to settle with 18th place on the grid.

The Mahindra Racing rider managed to ride at the front at the beginning of the morning practice, but he lost a lot of ground towards the end of FP3 due to the setup, which didn’t turn out as expected. During the Qualifying there wasn’t much of a difference; the youngster from Almada never found the MGP3O to his liking and only managed to shave a tenth of a second from his best time set during FP2 which at the time placed him in a very promising forth place.

Miguel Oliveira “We made changes to the set-up which weren’t as good as expected. We had no speed and we had lots of problems entering corners and that made us lose lots of time. I didn’t feel comfortable with the bike and mainly because of that I wasn’t able to find the best lines, which is very important in a track like this.

In the end we didn’t take the right direction and ended up in 18th, three seconds from pole, which is a lot. Tomorrow during warmup we will try to find solutions to improve the bike, but it will be a tough day. We will do everything to score as many points as possible and minimise the damage, but I must say that I am already thinking about what lies ahead and the first European race.”

Source: Miguel Oliveira Official Website