Marco Bezzecchi
Miguel Oliveira’s 2025 MotoGP campaign had barely started running before he was taken out of action at the Grand Prix of Argentina.
Contact with Fermin Aldeguer in the sprint race left him injured, but unable to have surgery, he had to wait for a ligament in his left shoulder to heal.
Oliveira eventually returned four races later at the French Grand Prix, but has failed to impress since and his ride for 2026 is at risk.
Pramac have failed to impress this season and have gone from competing for race victories to the fringe of the top 10. The Yamaha project is improving, and it appears that they need more time to harmonise.
Now that he’s had a little time on the bike, he will be expected to perform again. Oliveira has been given a Pramac ultimatum and told that he only has a couple of weeks to save his career.
Toprak Razgatlioglu could partner a new Pramac signing, meaning that the team would have an all-new line-up for 2026. Where Oliveira may go after that is hard to know.
Miguel Oliveira admits he learned from Jorge Martin’s body after injury
One Oliveira contract clause could save Jack Miller, who is the other rider at the team currently at risk of losing his seat for 2026. One of them will be out by the end of the year at least.
However, the team are aware that the Spaniard has missed a chunk of time this season. Pramac want to avoid a ‘very unfair’ Oliveira situation and giving him some time on the bike was viewed as the solution.
He hasn’t done much with it, but he hasn’t quite lost his seat yet. He revealed to SPEEDWEEK that his comeback took extra time after seeing reigning champion Jorge Martin get hurt after his return.
“And well, the experience with Jorge was simply that you could see from the outside that he was injured, that he wanted to go fast, and sometimes he was fast,” he said.
“But his body wasn’t cooperating, and so your head has to work a bit harder. That helped me in the sense that I didn’t want to arrive and achieve more than I was capable of.”
READ MORE: Jack Miller discovers what he has to do to keep his Pramac seat ahead of Toprak Razgatlioglu arrival
Why Miguel Oliveira is at risk of losing his MotoGP ride
Looking at results over the last few years, things have been trending downwards for Oliveira, who hasn’t reached the podium since his victory at the 2022 Grand Prix of Thailand.
Since then, he has raced for two different manufacturers (Aprilia and Yamaha) and has suffered multiple injuries.
At the age of 30, with plenty of new talent coming in, Oliveira’s experience is now his main selling point. He can still retain his ride with a good result or two.
Neil Hodgson has ‘never seen’ the sort of clause that Oliveira has in his contract, which will have ramped the pressure up on him.
He just has to make sure that the next few races, starting with the Italian Grand Prix, are all good ones and display what he can truly do.
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