MotoGP, Miguel Oliveira takes advantage of chaos in the sprint to win a point

Miguel Oliveira managed to win a point in the sprint race of the Spanish Grand Prix, finishing in ninth place. The Portuguese qualified poorly, despite the wet conditions, and then managed to stay upright in the sprint race, with many crashes ahead of him.

The day started with rain and Miguel Oliveira showed good signs in the second free practice session, with the conditions helping him. The Portuguese driver was practically always in the top-10, finishing in sixth place, with his best lap in 1:48.794 minutes, finishing 611 thousandths behind the fastest, which was Marc Márquez.

At the time of Q1, even with wet conditions, the Portuguese driver suffered from the same problems that he usually suffers in qualifying on dry surfaces. The Portuguese driver was not far from the top spots after the first few laps, having improved afterwards and even jumping to first place for a brief moment. However, the Portuguese driver did not improve his time in the two laps he still had to complete, being pushed to fourth place by the improvements of Franco Morbidelli, Brad Binder (both qualified for Q2) and Johann Zarco. Thus, Miguel Oliveira would start from 14th place for the weekend’s two races.

In the race, Oliveira started poorly and was in 20th, finishing the first lap in 17th, benefiting from the crashes of Aleix Espargaró and Jack Miller. The Portuguese driver then overtook Luca Marini to climb to 16th and gained another position (15th) after Pecco Bagnaia’s crash. He returned to 14th place after Fabio Di Giannantonio fell, but then returned to 15th when he was overtaken by Joan Mir. The successive falls of Álex Márquez, Brad Binder and Enea Bastianini caused Falcão to move to 12th place, later being 11th with the fall of Marco Bezzecchi and entering the top-10 after the fall of Maverick Viñales.

Oliveira benefited from an incident between Marc Márquez and Joan Mir to move up to eighth place, later losing to Marc Márquez, who was forced to give the Portuguese back position due to the incident with Mir. The Spaniard attacked again aggressively, forcing Oliveira to widen and lose a position to Augusto Fernández, falling out of the points. However, Johann Zarco’s fall meant that the Portuguese finished in ninth place, the last scoring position in a sprint.