Miguel Oliveira in 16th place at the start of the official tests
Miguel Oliveira (KTM) finished the first of three official MotoGP preseason testing days “feeling good on the bike”, despite having the 16th fastest time among the 26 riders who today rode the circuit Malay from Sepang.
This is the first session that features all the riders who will compete in the world championship in 2020, after three days of ‘shakedown’ at the beginning of the week only for rookies, test riders and teams still in development, such as KTM.
Today, the Almada rider did his best time in 2.00.131 minutes on the 46th of the 49 laps made throughout the session, 1,186 seconds from the fastest of the day, the Frenchman Fabio Quartararo, on a 2019 Yamaha.
Today’s time was about half a second from the record achieved by Miguel Oliveira in the ‘shakedown’, but the KTM Tech3 driver explained that the main focus, at this moment, is not yet to fight against the timer.
Miguel Oliveira was just 114 milliseconds from Spaniard Dani Pedrosa, KTM test driver, and 595 milliseconds from Spaniard Pol Espargaró, the best representative of the Austrian brand on the first day of testing, with eighth place.
Spaniard Iker Lecuona, Oliveira’s teammate at Tech3, was 20th, ahead of South African Brad Binder, from the official KTM team.
Today’s session was marked by the appearance of rain, which conditioned the work, especially in the final part, which is usually used by the drivers to try the fastest laps.
The tests continue on Saturday and Sunday, when rain is expected to return to the Malaysian route.
