Oliveira fighting through pain on MotoGP return

Miguel Oliveira admits he’s battling against pain from his injured right shoulder at Misano but feels confident he can complete the full San Marino MotoGP weekend.

The Red Bull KTM Tech3 rider sustained tendon damage in his right shoulder after being taken out during the British MotoGP by Johann Zarco three weeks ago with the injury forcing him to withdraw from the recent two-day Misano test after just two laps.

Oliveira fighting through pain on MotoGP return

Miguel Oliveira admits he’s battling against pain from his injured right shoulder at Misano but feels confident he can complete the full San Marino MotoGP weekend.

The Red Bull KTM Tech3 rider sustained tendon damage in his right shoulder after being taken out during the British MotoGP by Johann Zarco three weeks ago with the injury forcing him to withdraw from the recent two-day Misano test after just two laps.

With team boss Herve Poncharal keeping his fingers crossed over Oliveira’s fitness heading into Misano, the Portuguese rider has confirmed he believes he can complete the full race weekend despite pain from his shoulder which isn’t being helped by the high number of right-hand corners and braking zones putting stress on his shoulder.

“I feel better than at the test that is for sure,” Oliveira said. “With the pain it is in braking and unfortunately we have a lot of right-hand corner braking here which is limiting me quite a bit.

“But at least I am able to be constant every lap as the pain does not increase so this is the positive thing and hopefully day by day I can improve as I am exercising the muscle. Hopefully I will be in better shape tomorrow.

“I am taking medication and physiotherapy in the clinic which is the only thing I can do now.”

Oliveira says he can’t be 100% certain about being race fit until he completes a long run at Misano, having stuck to a maximum of six-lap runs during Friday practice, as he focused on setup work aiming to catch up on lost track time after sitting out the test.

“Because we missed the test here we wanted to make setup steps during the two free practices so in that case we did shorter runs,” he said

“I spent more time than usual in the pit box to try to calm down and not inflame the shoulder and try to control everything so that I could do quality laps and not run one fast lap and then slow down.”

Oliveira ended Friday practice 20th overall out of the 23 riders on track and 1.5s off the pace of the front-runners over a single lap.

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