Doha MotoGP, Qatar: Oliveira: 'Martin start', dashboard down, backwards race

[weeksy]

Ah man, that's a shame for the KTM ! Dashboard failure off the line.

Miguel Oliveira riding 'blind' in Doha MotoGP; 'After the start my dashboard went black and didn’t have any information about shifting lights, maps, tyre information. It was all gone'.

Miguel Oliveira produced a near replica of Jorge Martin's stunning race start a week earlier in Qatar as the KTM rider powered from twelfth on the grid to third at Turn 1 of Sunday's Doha round.

"It was a normal start, the kind we have been practicing in these times," Oliveira said. "Actually the 0-100k was the same as I do in my practice starts so we did that on the race and my reaction to the lights was good.

"I kept myself together because Bradl was next to me and he moved the bike when the lights were red. In those cases it is easy to anticipate also and jump the start but I kept it together and it was a good start.

"Sometimes these things come out well because when you put the power people are in the middle and you don’t know where to go because there isn’t much space.

"The start was the most positive thing today. It was a backwards race. It started really well and lap by lap I didn’t have it. The bikes was a bit slow changing direction and I couldn’t really make a counter attack on my rivals."

The KTMs had struggled badly for front tyre wear in the opening round, prompting all four to try the medium instead of the soft on Sunday.

But Oliveira also had a far more unusual issue to contend with.

"After the start my dashboard went black and didn’t have any information about shifting lights, maps, tyre information: it was all gone. It was really hard to do the race by pure sensation," revealed the Portuguese.

"I went to a fuel saving map mode and so it become very hard for me to follow anyone and obviously I did not know I was in this mode. It becomes really impossible to follow anyone.

It makes for a very lonely race and secondly you mid-shift a lot of times. Actually the limiter on the bikes are electronic so it’s not like another kind of bike where you feel it physically retaining once you get to it and because it is so smooth you don’t know if you are under or over-shifting in certain moments.

"On a track like Qatar it super-important to use the shifting lights. I was going by feeling and because we have ridden so many laps here I tried to do it in the same points.

"But of course afterwards I checked with the team and there was not one time where I shifted correctly! It was pretty frustrating. If you shift two-thousandths of a second later the bike is already on the limit for a few metres at 270ph and that slows you down quite a bit. So, we need the dashboard!"