On a very tiring day for Miguel Oliveira, the pilot from Almada reached 11th place on the starting grid of the Thai Grand Prix, a positive result for Falcão, who had to qualify for Q2.
As happened on Friday, the rain forecasts failed, which caused a certain expectation in FP3, as, in FP2, many drivers failed to improve their FP1 times, which put them out of Q2. The time to beat was 1m30s765, by Franco Morbidelli. Miguel Oliveira was in eighth position, with 1m30s608.
However, at the Chang International Circuit, in Buriram, Thailand, the truth is that the third session of the Thai Grand Prix was quite warm, with few changes in the first positions, which meant that Miguel Oliveira kept his eighth place until 8 minutes before the end of FP3. In the next minute, the Portuguese fell to ninth position, then to 11th, with 1m30 of the end of the session, and then to 12th position…
On his last lap in FP3, the pilot from Almada did not achieve his objective and the best he achieved in the third session was 1m30s818, 11th place (12th in the combined), with Jorge Martin recording the best time of the three sessions , with 1m30s205.
In FP4, Miguel Oliveira, with hard tires at the front and medium at the back, reached the 10th time, with 1m31s224 (Johann Zarco was the fastest, with 1m30s830), in a session that presented 30º C. The pilot from Almada almost always rode around 1m31, probably the pace of the race on Sunday.
With soft tires at the front and medium at the rear at the start of Q1 and with a medium at the front and a soft at the back after the pit stop, Miguel Oliveira once again showed his value and reached second place in the session, that is, he secured a place in the Q2. On the seventh lap in a total of eight laps, Falcão reached a time of 1m30s099, curiously on the same lap in which Marc Marquez had the best record of Q1, with 1m30s038.
In Q2, Miguel Oliveira took advantage of only the final five minutes of the session. With a soft tire at the rear and a medium tire on the front wheel, Falcão bet everything and ended up not being rewarded, as he reached the 11th time of qualifying, with 1m30s485, in a very exhausting day for the pilot from Almada, who saw Marco Bezzecchi reach his first pole position and set a new circuit record, 1m29s671 (the previous one was by Fabio Quartararo, with 1m29s719). As a curiosity, if Miguel Oliveira repeated the same time from Q1, he would come out in seventh position.
With this result, Miguel Oliveira will leave on Sunday in the fourth row of the starting grid.
Sunday, October 02
WUP – 4:40 am to 5:00 am
Race – 09h00
