Misfortune strikes for Miguel Oliveira and Iker Lecuona in Andalusian GP

After having secured his best ever starting position in the MotoGP World Championship on Sunday with a fantastic performance, Red Bull KTM Tech3’s Miguel Oliveira was set to launch off the Gran Premio Red Bull de Andalucía from the second row of the grid. In doing so, he got caught in traffic, early on when the red lights went off, which lead to an unlucky incident in the first corner. The Portuguese star didn’t have any chance to avoid a crash and had to bury his hopes for another great result on the first lap.

Coming from P17 on the grid, Iker Lecuona had a decent start to make up two positions in the course of the first lap. In the following laps, the Spaniard was fighting hard in a rookie duel with Alex Marquez, managed to pass him on the fifth lap of his third MotoGP race, but then unfortunately lost the front in the final corner and had to retire. Fortunately, both, Oliveira and Lecuona came away unscathed and will be ready to strike back in less than a fortnight for the third round of the 2020 season in Brno, Czech Republic.

Miguel Oliveira:

“It was a disappointing end of this weekend for sure. After seeing the race, I could have been easily in the top 5 or even on the podium, I would risk to say, so it’s just disappointing not even having been able to start the race with the incident in the first corner. I was just an unlucky guy in this position, but there was really nothing I could do to avoid the crash. It was the first corner, everyone wants to gain positions, so it’s normal that sometimes we misjudge braking points and we are too optimistic. But we have more races this year, it’s not the end of the world. We take the positives from this weekend and we continue on to the next one.”

Iker Lecuona:

“I just need to say sorry to the team! This start of the season hasn’t been easy for us so far. Last week, I was fighting with the temperatures. In the race today, I don’t know why, but the bike felt a bit different than before. I was fighting a lot with Alex Marquez. We passed each other two or three times on the same lap. Finally, my lap time was better, so I tried to catch up with the guys in front of me. I did one mistake and tried to push again, but finally I lost the front. I saved two or three crashes on each lap, so it was truly difficult. I still want to repeat, that I’m very sorry for my team. I know, that they are pushing very hard all the time. We will try to improve in Brno.”