ROAD RACING: Oliveira goes fourth quickest in close Q1 – Syahrin to start Argentina GP from row seven

In a very close first Qualifying session today, Red Bull KTM Tech3 rider Miguel Oliveira missed out on his first ever Q2 entry by just 0.081 seconds. The Portuguese MotoGP rookie displayed a strong performance throughout day two at the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit, lowered his FP1 time by 1.961 seconds already this morning to further progress during the fourth Free Practice and the Qualifying session and eventually start his second premier class race tomorrow from the fifth row of the grid.

On the other side of the Red Bull KTM Tech3 garage, Hafizh Syahrin likewise improved by strong 2.061 seconds from FP1 to FP3 and concluded the first Qualifying this afternoon just 0.755 seconds behind his teammate, whereby he also improved on his position and lowered his pace again by more than half a second. The Malaysian star will start the second Grand Prix of the year from seventh row tomorrow at 15.00 local time (20.00 CET).

Miguel Oliveira

Position: 4^th
Time: 1:39.298
Laps: 8

“Overall it has been a positive day. We improved our Qualifying position from the last race, which is a good fact. I improved my riding, actually I’m very close to get into Q2, so it was not a bad day. I felt better with the bike, the team worked really good and we just keep improving all the time. I understand more how to ride the bike – many steps forward, so now I’m just excited to do the race tomorrow.”

Hafizh Syahrin

Position: 11^th
Time: 1:40.053
Laps: 8

“We made a quite big improvement today, but we still need to find something a bit easier to ride with regards to the race pace, because at the moment, we have a really good rhythm, but we were missing something in terms of traction in the exit of the corners. Anyway, we believe that we are getting closer and closer now, but we still need to work more, understand more. I’m happy about this Qualifying, although I know we are still quite far from the top, but my feeling with the bike is a lot better than in Qatar and all the tests before. We just need to keep working hard and even more. Let’s see what we can do in tomorrow’s Warm Up in order to find a bit extra traction for the race distance.”