Miguel Oliveira admits he has a feeling of unfinished business as he joins Pramac-Yamaha: Two years in Aprilia teams marred by four injuries
For Miguel Oliveira, the upcoming 2025 MotoGP season will be his seventh season in total in the premier class of the World Championship. For this, the Portuguese is changing manufacturer for the second time. After riding a KTM from 2019 to 2022, Oliveira has been driving an Aprilia for the past two years. From 2025, Oliveira will be riding a Yamaha until at least the end of 2026.
As the teammate of Jack Miller, who in turn comes from KTM, Oliveira has signed with the new Yamaha satellite team Pramac. He completed his first laps on the M1 just like Miller in mid-November at the official MotoGP test for 2025 in Barcelona.
Oliveira has taken five Grand Prix victories in four years with KTM. He achieved his first two victories in the 2020 season with the satellite team Tech3, followed by the other three in 2021 and 2022 with the factory team. Oliveira has not won again since October 2022, but he has suffered four injuries that have all forced him to miss races.
The two years in Aprilia teams – 2023 with RNF and 2024 with Trackhouse – did not go according to plan for Oliveira. On his race debut on an RS-GP, the 2023 season opener at Portimao, Oliveira was involved in a serious crash with then-Honda factory rider Marc Marquez. As a result, the Portuguese missed a race weekend (Argentina) with a tendon injury in his hip area.
Oliveira also missed the French weekend in Le Mans in 2023 due to an injury to his left shoulder, sustained in the crash at the start of the Jerez sprint. But that wasn’t all: in November 2023, Oliveira himself was injured in a crash with Aprilia factory rider Aleix Espargaró during a sprint in Qatar. With a broken shoulder blade (in this case on the right), he had to end the season prematurely and also missed the Valencia test.
And the 2024 season in the Trackhouse team was also one in which Oliveira was unable to contest several race weekends due to injury. In this case, his highside in training for the Indonesian weekend was the reason.
“The crash was unlucky. There was a short circuit in the bike’s electronic control unit,” Oliveira reveals, recalling: ”As a result, I lost all electronics and went down on the handlebars [during the highside].”
Oliveira missed the rest of the weekend there with a broken right wrist, plus the following four race weekends (Japan, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia).
Oliveira made his comeback and at the same time his last appearance on an Aprilia at the 2024 season finale in Barcelona. He still managed to score four championship points in Sunday’s Grand Prix with P12. However, he cannot be truly satisfied with the way the last two years have gone.
Oliveira finished 16th in the MotoGP overall standings in the 2023 season and 15th in the 2024 season. Highlights included a second place in the 2024 Sachsenring sprint for Trackhouse and a fourth place in the 2023 British Grand Prix at Silverstone for RNF.
The Portuguese rider had expected much more in the winter of 2022/23 when he came from KTM. When asked if he feels he has some unfinished business with Pramac-Yamaha, Oliveira replies, “Yes, no question. I had that feeling when I left KTM too. But in relation to Aprilia, that feeling is even stronger.”
