Miguel Oliveira had a difficult first day in Sarthe, marked by two falls during FP1 where the Portuguese was injured and which affected his confidence on the Bugatti circuit. The KTM rider then had bad luck during FP2, where he was constantly stopped in his tracks due to traffic and/or yellow flags.
The winner of the Indonesian GP answered journalists' questions at the end of the second free practice session of the day, and we transcribe his entire remarks here.
Miguel, can you look back on your day?
« It was a difficult day. The beginnings were horrible to say the least. We crashed twice, the first time due to a technical problem, the second due to a rear tire that was too cold. It was the hard tire that we had on, and it wasn't grippy enough: with less than 50° of angle I had the right to a highside at the entrance to turn 5. I hurt myself by hand while falling on the left side. In the afternoon my first outings mainly consisted of getting used to riding my bike, because I had difficulty getting a good grip on the handlebars. Subsequently I was not able to set a good time because of the yellow flags.
»
There were a lot of accidents today. Is the level of grip on the track to blame?
« Not really. I have the feeling that we have a pretty good level of grip. The temperatures are good, but despite this you can still lose the front or the rear suddenly, so we can say that in a sense the track is very sensitive. Most of the crashes took place in the second corner, as it follows a long straight where the left side of the tires tends to cool, but we also saw other crashes in various places around the circuit. So I don't really know what to think about it. »
