With just one week of rest, the final stage of the 2020 MotoGP World Championship is fast approaching, kicking off this weekend with the Gran Premio de Europa. Thereby, Miguel Oliveira has to rediscover the Circuit Ricardo Tormo aboard his KTM RC16, after being unable to participate one year ago. Yet, the Portuguese is prompt to build up on his previous strong achievements of this season during the upcoming three rounds, which culminate in a home Grand Prix for Oliveira.
Likewise, Iker Lecuona is extremely driven to perform well, as the Gran Premio de Europa is the first of two consecutive home events for the Red Bull KTM Tech3 rider from Valencia. Equaling his personal best premier class result from Austria just a few days ago in Aragón with ninth, the MotoGP rookie confirmed his impressive learning curve and is eager to maintain his steady progress in the last three races in a row, starting this Friday with Free Practice one at 10.55 local time.
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Miguel Oliveira
Championship: 10th
Points: 79
"I’m obviously very excited to go to the last three rounds of the championship. It has been very intense, so I think we all are finally glad to start the final events with high motivation. Valencia is a nice track, the last two times, I raced there, I won, so I’m for sure eager to arrive there. It’s going to be two challenging weekends, we know, with two races back to back at the same place and we need to be ready from the word go. Obviously, I’m also very excited for the final round in Portugal, which gives me an extra motivation to go ahead in this triple."
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Iker Lecuona
Championship: 17th
Points: 27
"I want to try to keep this momentum, because after these two weeks in Aragón I learned a lot, I improved my feeling and I fought with the big guys in the MotoGP World Championship. So, I want to continue like this, I aim to continue to work and to stay inside the top 10 again. I know I have the level to do this for the reminder of the season."
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Hervé Poncharal
Team Manager
"Here comes Valencia, where we will have two races back to back at the same circuit. Valencia will be the first of the final triple of our 2020 MotoGP World Championship, that started almost yesterday. It went so quick, but since then a lot of things happened. I think we have to be happy and proud to be inside the top 10 of the provisional MotoGP ranking with Miguel and having done some exciting races with Iker as a rookie. Of course, we hope that these last three races will be as good as the last one in Teruel, Aragón, where we finally scored some nice results with Miguel in P6 and Iker in P9. Valencia is always a tough circuit with a MotoGP bike. We couldn’t race with Miguel there last year due to his shoulder injury. It was a very first premier class round for Iker though. So, we will be heading kind of into the unknown with the KTM in Valencia and if we see the progress we’ve done since last year, I think we should be a lot more competitive. The target is always to fight for the top 8, which is a reasonable target. I hope the weather will be on our side. We are entering November now, which bears a possibility of cold and even wet weather. Anyway, everybody at Red Bull KTM Tech3 team is very excited to enter the last straight of our championship. Let’s try to be competitive from Friday morning FP1 with our two riders."
