ROAD RACING: Productive first day on Argentinean ground for Oliveira and Syahrin

The Termas de Rio Hondo circuit welcomed the MotoGP class with decent weather for the second round of the 2019 World Championship today, although the conditions on track were more ideal during FP2 this afternoon, which was obvious in the incredibly tight standings of the entire field.

Red Bull KTM Tech3’s Miguel Oliveira impressed from the word go with fast lap times in South America. The premier class rookie lowered his personal best by 1.507 seconds from FP1 to the second session and eventually missed out on the provisional Q2 positions by just 0.377 seconds. On the other side of the Red Bull KTM Tech3 garage, Hafizh Syahrin improved by strong 1.927 seconds from the first to the second Free Practice to finally find himself just 1.571 seconds behind the top.

Miguel Oliveira

Position: 19^th
Time: 1:40.006
Laps: 38

“Today was a good day. I think we improved a lot from FP1 to FP2, we did a quite good job and had a good pace in the second practice today and I felt comfortable with the bike. Still I’m looking for another step as with the new tyre we don’t gain so much traction like the others, so this is something we need to look into to be able to be more competitive. But in any case, I’m happy about the general work, the pace, my riding was good today, so I aim to just keep improving like this.”

Hafizh Syahrin

Position: 22^nd
Time: 1:40.752
Laps: 38

“I’m quite surprised. In the morning I didn’t have a good feeling with the bike, it was similar to Qatar. Later we did just very small changes, but we found really decent grip on the rear compared to this morning. I couldn’t use the potential of the soft tyres, because I couldn’t truly find out where the limit is. But finally, I feel really good with the bike and we can fight closer to the others as I nearly improved by two seconds this afternoon. We believe that we can improve more tomorrow. Now I start to understand how we have to work, we need another step to get closer.”