Saturday was not a happy day for Miguel Oliveira at Phillip Island, stage of the Australian Grand Prix. The Portuguese reached the 21st position on the starting grid on Sunday in Q1, but shortly afterwards was punished in three positions, in addition to a Long Lap Penalty in the race…
After confessing that he didn't get used to his bike in the first two practice sessions of the Australian Grand Prix, on Friday, Miguel Oliveira started the third session in the best way, reaching the fifth fastest time of the combined sessions, a tenuous demonstration that it could have partially solved some of the problems he encountered at KTM the day before.
The Portuguese shone again in the final 15 minutes and, in two laps, reached fourth and second places in the general standings with times of 1m29s534 and 1m29s510, respectively, with medium tires at the front and soft at the back.
However, when Miguel Oliveira was in the pits to make the final adjustments for the F3 team attack, the rivals improved their times and “threw” Falcão to 13th position. When he returned, in the 41st minute of the session, the Portuguese still managed to reach his best time, with 1m29s133, insufficient record to qualify directly for Q2, as he ended the session in 16th position (the fastest was Marc Marquez , with 1m28s462).
With 1m29s656 in FP4 (14th time), Miguel Oliveira did not get a better record than the 11th in Q1 (1m28s859), which meant leaving the 21st position of the starting grid. However, the Portuguese was penalized three places and a Long Lap Penalty for having hindered the performance of Enea Bastianini, which means that he will leave the Australian Grand Prix in 24th place on Sunday, the classification of the year, which does a very complicated race on Sunday, since KTM, at least on Friday and at least on Saturday, has not yet been matched, unlike Miguel Oliveira and with 1m28s652, he leaves from 16th place ). The fastest in Q1 were Johann Zarco (1m28s132) and Alex Rins (1m28s347)
In Q2, the top three were Jorge Martini (1m27s767, new circuit record), Marc Marquez (1m27s780) and Francesco Bagnaia (1m27s953).
It is recalled that Miguel Oliveira will make his debut in the race on Sunday in MotoGP (he has two victories on the circuit, in Moto3 and Moto2), since, in 2019, he had an accident and ended up not participating in the race, which, tomorrow , October 16, will take place at 4:00 am, Portugal time (the Warm Up is scheduled to start this Saturday and will take place between 11:40 pm and 12:00 am).
