Red Bull KTM’s Miguel Oliveira completed a rollercoaster day at MotoGP Assen after recovering from 14th to sit third overall at the close of second practice.
With three podiums to his name from recent races, the Portuguese rider continued his run of form by bouncing back immediately from a difficult FP1, to sit second in the rain-struck afternoon session. Improving his pace by over a second, he concluded the opening day of preparations for the Dutch GP third in the combined times and just three-tenths behind fastest man, Maverick Viñales.
“It was a good first day,” Oliveira said on Friday afternoon.
“Not the smoothest one because of the poor session we had in FP1 but after that, the team reacted quite well and gave me a good solution to start FP2 and immediately I felt I could be more competitive. It’s just a shame that we couldn’t really understand how much further we could go with the bike setting, and see our true potential [because of the rain] but it was like that for everyone.
“Tomorrow, our job is to be ready for any condition and to be fast in FP3 so we can go straight to Q2.
“We were looking basically to gain more agility on fast corners, so the changes we did were with that goal in mind and we managed to achieve it,” the KTM man continued as he explained his day further.
“Now, we need to work a little bit more, make more laps on the dry to understand what would have been the next step or finalise them.”
Despite rain interfering in the afternoon’s plans, the day’s differing conditions didn’t seem to faze the laid-back 26-year old either, with the new track surface proving to be a crowd pleaser.
“On the wet was quite okay also,” he said, simply. “I built a good reference already from the moment I started and if it rains tomorrow, I think we already have a good base to continue.
“The track has, also on the wet, very high grip and the bumps are a little bit more smooth, especially turn one and turn two. After the back straight, going to turn six I feel more or less the same as I remember here,” he concluded.
