Jack Miller didn’t have an easy Saturday at the MotoGP French Grand Prix. The rider finished in eighth place to collect two points, managing to improve compared to his starting grid position.
Regarding the qualifying session, which fell short of his expectations by finishing 11th, the Red Bull KTM rider stated: ‘The qualifying didn’t go to plan, I just could not get a lap together. I threw everything I could at it. I was having a lots and lots and lots of warnings […]. The lap before I crash, I had Pedro, I lost the front the exact same spot. I kind of started coming back on the track, and me and Pedro nearly got together. He went up the inside. I was just trying to hold up the crash and it was one of those situations. And then I tried to push again and did the exact same thing’.
Despite the good start, Miller faced some difficulties in the early laps, as he revealed: ‘I got a good start. I went a little bit too soft in the turn three. I got a great jump and had made up a lot of ground, and I thought: «Oh, the front device hadn’t popped out yet». I thought just maintain poisition, try not to attack – and you can’t with these savages. You got to either be attacking or get attacked. So I got knocked around a little bit in the turn three, and I lost a little bit of the ground that I made up. But I was able to settle. I was missing a little bit speed in the initial phases as the rear tyre took a long time to start working. The guys around me were just really able to crack it early: turns 6, 7, 8, even on the chicane. And I was really having a nurse there just to try and get it to hook up. And then it got better as the race went on’.
The situation improved for the Australian in the final laps, but he admitted that there’s room for improvement at the start: ‘I felt strong on the last couple of laps, so that’s positive. We’re just going to understand why we were struggling a little bit more in the beginning stage of the race because that’s when you can really make up or lose positions’.