MotoGP race winner resigned to WorldSBK midfield: “What can I expect?”

Former MotoGP rider Miguel Oliveira has suggested he cannot expect more than to be just outside the top-10 of WorldSBK and over one second off the pace.

Oliveira was 11th and 1.2 seconds behind Nicolo Bulega on day one of the Phillip Island test on 16 January. 

The Portuguese rider moves to World Superbike this year after a six-year MotoGP career that saw him win five races with KTM, and so a jump to WorldSBK might have been assumed to be one that would bring him more success after three winless years at the end of his grand prix career.

However, Oliveira says that his position at the end of the first day of the final test of his first WorldSBK preseason is about all he can expect at the minute, having gone through two tests in January that were affected by rain, the second one in Portimao to the extent that BMW moved its whole team to Valencia to ride at a track day instead.

“I mean, what can I expect with no preseason,” Miguel Oliveira asked rhetorically when asked by WorldSBK.com if 11th and 1.2 seconds off the pace matched his expectations for this point in the preseason.

“I need more experience, for sure, and I need more laps – this is true. 

“The road is upwards, that we know for sure. As long as we are making the steps and feeling what is happening underneath me, that’s the most important thing. 

“At the moment, we feel we are doing exactly that, so I guess that’s our expectation and at the moment we are ticking the boxes to be as ready as we can for the race weekend.”

In general, Oliveira – who finished ahead of his teammate Danilo Petrucci on Monday – was pleased with his first full dry day of running on World Superbike machinery since November.

“It was a good day,” he said. “We had two long sessions to be able to get to know the bike a little bit more and really, I would say, start in a proper way our preseason. 

“We didn’t have a real preseason, so this was definitely very helpful for me to get back on the bike and regain the feelings I had a little bit back in November when I first tried the bike.

“We tried to mainly adapt riding style, make a few setup changes just to get me comfortable on the bike; that was really it, that was what we could do in a day, do these adjustments and continue the adaptation.”