The opening day of the 2023 MotoGP World Championship at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve proved to be an eventful one. This morning’s FP1 was spoiled by some light rain in the beginning, while two red flags hindered proceedings in the afternoon during Free Practice two.
The CryptoDATA RNF MotoGP Team rider Miguel Oliveira struggled to build up the right confidence and speed with the interruptions, and on his way to a fast time, he went down. Luckily, Oliveira came away with no further damage, although the Portuguese home hero was affected by a contusion to his left foot and leg.
Local man Oliveira struggled to build a feeling in the changing conditions this morning and at the beginning of FP2, which was quickly interrupted by nearly half an hour by some timing issues. After the re-start, the Portuguese suffered a crash out of turn ten, where he hit his left leg heavily. Despite his crash, he was able to improve his lap time from the morning session by 0.836 seconds and ended the day in P19, just 0.054 seconds behind his teammate, Raul Fernandez.
“Today was a strange day. We had Practice one with some drizzle at the beginning and managed to do only two runs. Therefore, we were not able to get a really good feeling. In Free Practice two it started quite well, I felt good with the bike, but when I tried the other bike we had in the garage with another configuration there was an issue with the steering damper. Then, there was this huge delay on the timing error. I don’t know what happened. For sure today was not the brightest day in terms of how smooth the sessions were. I had a heavy crash when I went on my out lap with new tyres. I went down because of a cold rear tyre. At first, I thought Pol’s bike had hit me, but then I completely understood that I crashed alone and I highsided at the entry of turn 11. Luckily, I had just a contusion of my foot and on my left leg. Still I tried to do my best and go out with the soft front and the soft rear, trying to get a good lap time. But I was just not confident and just tried to get through the day. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have a better one”, said Miguel Oliveira.
The Charneca de Caparica rider is looking to gain more confidence in Free Practice three tomorrow at 10:10 local time (11:10 CET) in hopes of making it through to Q2 and securing a solid starting position for the first-ever MotoGP sprint race on Saturday at 15:00 local time (16:00 CET).
