Just moments before the red flag was shown due to adverse conditions, Miguel Oliveira entered the pits to retire from the MotoGP Japanese GP due to visibility problems caused by an issue with his helmet. He was still classified in 18th place, but had he not entered the pits, the result could have been much better.
When the race was almost set to restart, the #88 was allowed to go but from the pit lane, explaining to SportTV that it was a mistake by the CryptoDATA RNF MotoGP Team:
– What happened was that I entered – we know that 99 percent of the time when we enter the pit during the race, we’re going to retire. Fortunately, the race direction quickly realized after my retirement that the conditions were too dangerous to race. And the team quickly put the bike inside the box, knowing that if we wanted to resume the race, the team couldn’t put the bike inside the box. This is something the team learned – they already knew about it in advance from the regulations, but they learned it in that sense. And obviously, when I resumed the race, I had to restart from the back and then start from the pit lane, which didn’t happen because by the time of the formation lap, the conditions became very similar to before the race was declared finished.