There is no doubt that at the end of qualifying, Miguel Oliveira and his French team are a little disappointed.
The Red Bull KTM Tech3 team rider has indeed stood out since the start of the weekend, very often in the top 10 and even more often at the head of all the KTMs before seeing direct access to Q2 slip away from him. during FP3.
From then on, the chips were down, so to speak, against riders of the caliber of Andrea Dovizioso and Álex Rins, especially since the number 88 had to use his 2nd bike for qualifying.
The Portuguese rider is, however, far from unworthy, leading his KTM almost at the same pace as that of the official riders, which will have the consequence of presenting a 5th row entirely made up of the RC16s of Pol Espargaró, Johann Zarco and Miguel Oliveira tomorrow at the start of the Grand Prix: a sort of race within the race from which the rookie hopes to do as well as possible by being incisive from the first moments, despite a KTM which moves a lot at the exit of the corner.
Miguel Oliveira : “I had some good tests but we didn't reach the position we hoped for on the grid. Overall, today was a tough day. We tried our best to be quick. This morning we were realistic about Q2 against calibers like Dovi, Rins and Pol, but we didn't get straight into it by less than a tenth of a second. We knew Q1 would be difficult, but we did our best and in the end we got a very unique qualifying with a line made up of KTMs. Tomorrow we will see where our pace is. Right now it's being tweaked for the race, so let's wait and see what we can do. On the positive side, we don't lose as much time on worn tires as we did on a single timed lap. I hope Sunday's race will be at a pace we can keep up with. In any case, there are enough places to double up here. So we can hopefully make up some positions at the very beginning.”
Generally speaking, the KTMs appear to move a lot when exiting corners on the British circuit, regardless of the riding style and settings adopted.
“At the moment I wouldn't call it a settings problem because all three KTMs behave the same. It's a combination of many things. This doesn't make our lives any easier. Because in the MotoGP category, stability when exiting corners is an important aspect. You really have to manage the throttle and keep the traction control from interfering too much. But with an unstable motorcycle, it’s very tricky.”
Ranking Qualification 2 British Grand Prix MotoGP:
Ranking Qualification 1 British Grand Prix MotoGP:
Credit rankings and photo: MotoGP.com
