A badly-timed "bug in the system" may have ended the Asian leg of the MotoGP season before it even began for Miguel Oliveira, as Trackhouse Aprilia manager Wilco Zeelenberg explained to The Race.
Portuguese racer Oliveira broke his wrist during practice for this weekend’s Indonesian Grand Prix in a crash he later revealed was caused by a technical issue with his machine’s traction control software.
In the first practice of the Indonesian Grand Prix, an electrical problem on the bike caused it to be without traction control and I crashed. The result is a broken wrist that will need surgery. I hope to come back soon.#turma88 pic.twitter.com/pVP4hZ22rH
— Miguel Oliveira #88 (@_moliveira88) September 27, 2024
Oliveira crashed only 14 laps into his weekend at the Mandalika circuit, highsiding at Turn 4 during Friday morning’s FP1 session. Though the fall hadn't looked particularly severe at first glance, it was discovered upon 3D scanning at a local hospital that he had suffered a fracture to the radius bone in his right wrist.
Immediately flying home to Portugal for further consultation on whether he will need surgical intervention to repair the fracture, it means that he will miss both the Indonesian race and next weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix at Motegi - but with four races in the next five weeks, his participation in the races in both Thailand and Malaysia is now also in doubt.
And what makes his injury even more frustrating for the 29-year-old is that it came through no fault of his own, according to veteran team boss Zeelenberg, who actually witnessed his rider’s crash first-hand while watching trackside.
“We had a technical issue,” Zeelenberg - who, like Oliveira, will leave Trackhouse at the end of the season - explained to The Race.
“One or two seconds before he ran into T4, his technical problem gave him a light on the dash, but he didn’t see it.
“These bikes are quite protective with traction control. He had a warning, but he couldn’t see it because he was off [the side of] the bike, and it flicked him off.
“I think it happens quite a lot in this championship, but unfortunately he got injured straight away. It wasn’t a big crash, but the [TC] support that he needed wasn’t there and they really rely on that because the performance is huge.
“It didn’t support what it needed to support. Clearly it’s a bug in the system, and he was off.”
The crash was one of a number of mechanical issues that have already plagued the MotoGP grid only two days into the opening Asian-leg (discounting the opener in Qatar) race of the year, with factory KTM racer Brad Binder particularly unfortunate on Saturday to struggle with both a leaking rear brake in qualifying and a stuck ride height device at the start of the sprint race - albeit the latter was more related to him not finding the opportunity to brake hard enough until well into the opening lap.
It’s unlikely to be the last weekend this season where teams face unexpected technical issues.
Going into the hottest and most intense stage of the calendar and without the direct support of their home bases in Europe, Zeelenberg says that things going wrong, especially with development happening as rapidly as it does in modern MotoGP, is somewhat to be expected.
“This [the issue that caused Oliveira's crash] is a problem we’ve never had before,” he added, “but if you see the bikes, and the wires, and the cables, you can’t really imagine it’s not all bulletproof.
“Especially with the way that they try to develop the bikes right now, with how fast they try to make them better, this also brings risk with it. With the temperatures we have here, it’s even worse.”
