A dangerous incident on the home stretch at 350km/h in FP1 gave Miguel Oliveira pause for thought. He asked his colleagues to think about the usefulness of the wings.
“We experienced two different sessions. We had a lot of pre-heated tires in the allocation that had already been heated at another Grand Prix,” said the Red Bull KTM factory rider. “We had to use them up as quickly as possible. In the morning of FP1, the medium rear tire was really bad for me. And in the afternoon the soft compound didn’t give me any additional grip. But I feel that we are not missing very much. At the same time, the 15th position gives us no reason to smile. We just have to keep working and see what Saturday has in store for us.”
What happened in FP1 with the Aleix incident? Oliveira: «Aleix stuck in my slipstream, at the same time he pushed me out. That was at a very special place, on the home stretch, because we’re going over a hill there at 350 km/h, there’s a wall on the left in the immediate vicinity. To do this, we drive there with an incline. It was a borderline maneuver and a bit scary at that. But I kept my cool on the brakes before Turn 1. Although I landed on the grass, I made the next corner.”
«I’m a friend of innovations and performance. But when such actions happen, you start to think, »added the Portuguese. “Then you think, ‘Do we really need these wings? What are they contributing to the show? Are you really advantageous?’ Maybe they’re a little dangerous. That means we need to seriously discuss this issue. I think all drivers have to express their opinion on this, not just one person can raise his voice. And drivers from several manufacturers have to talk about it. It shouldn’t be that only one manufacturer advocates for the winglets.”
But Oliveira didn’t want to put all the blame on Aleix Espargaró. “He was also struggling with the pull. That’s a problem with these aerodynamics. The ‘dirty air’ creates turbulence. There are spots close behind another bike that you’re supposed to avoid when slipstreaming. You want to stay away from the ‘dirty air’, you want to avoid the turbulence. So you want to enjoy ‘clean air’ again as soon as possible. But I think Aleix stayed in the critical zone for too long. He then had to direct the bike differently in order to take the following corner. It was a combination of unfortunate events.”
On Friday, Oliveira and the other KTM riders had their “sidepods” removed from their KTM RC16, i.e. the lower, lateral part of the aerodynamic aids to make the motorcycle more agile and improve braking performance.
“It looks like that made it work a bit better,” said Miguel. «But at the moment we need completely different settings for this; we still have to make adjustments for Saturday. For the rest of the season we can use both options depending on the track. We’ll see which solution works better on which slope.”
Each team can homologate two different aero bodies per driver per season.
At KTM it now looks like this: Since Mugello, the second now homologated option is driving without the lower «sidepods».
“Exactly. That’s the way it is. Technically, this is considered an update,” Oliveira explained. “From now on we have these two options. We can ride with or without ‘side pods’.”