JACK Miller delivered so many brilliant one-liners after stirring his ride to the seventh in the Australian Grand Prix, it’s hard to know where to start.
“I didn’t see anything; I was just s***ing myself!” was a good one, when foxsports.com.au asked him if he saw the fans excitement when he leapt into the race lead off the start.
“Maybe I need to break my leg more often,” was another, citing his standout performance just 23 days after breaking his leg in a training incident, Miller riding the Phillip Island weekend with a plate and eight screws holding the two parts of his tibia together.
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REPORT: Marquez wins Australian GP thriller, boosts points lead
Did the leg give him any trouble during the 27 laps of the race?
“Not until I took it off the footpeg to put my leg down to do a burnout in front of my parents’ grandstand,” he quipped.
“I was like ‘ooh, that’s a bit stiff!’ It didn’t really give me any grief. Once it was on the bike, it was fine.”
From fifth on the grid, Miller’s leap from the line was matched only by that of eventual race-winner Marc Marquez, and when the factory Honda bowled slightly wide through Doohan Corner, the home crowd’s hero didn’t need to be asked twice.
“I got a decent start and then Marc ran wide and opened the door for me,” he explained. “So I just pushed through because I thought, f***, what better place to be on the first lap than first.
“I was just thinking in my head, Jesus is this really happening?”
He pulled the best part of a second over the chasing pack before reining himself in — too late, he felt — to conserve the soft rear Michelin tire he’d chosen for the race.
“Honestly, on the third lap I buttoned off a little bit just to try and allow the others to come through,” Miller said. “I probably pushed too hard on those first three laps and burnt maybe a little bit too much tire than I should’ve.
“I wanted whoever was behind me — I honestly thought it was Marc at that point in time — I just wanted them to come through on me because I wanted a marker, someone to set the pace so that I wasn’t out there spinning my tire off it’s head and destroying it — but I probably did that a little bit too much.
“Once I got a few laps behind Marc and understood what he was doing on his tire — in terms of like Turn 3 and especially over Lukey — I started doing that but it was probably too little, too late.
“But I’ve learned what I need to do, let’s say, for next year hopefully.”
The first time Miller’s leg gave him grief — doing a post-race burnout. Pic: Mark StewartSource: News Corp Australia
Miller would remain in the thick of a heated eight-bike battle for the lead — “It just felt like Moto3 all over again to me,” he joked — until the closing laps when it came time to pay the price for his early charge.
“I was on the same (engine) map the whole way through, which was my tire conservative map,” he said. “I stayed on that pretty much the whole way through the race.
“I looked at the lap board, saw it was 3 laps to go so I tried to have another little dig to close the gap to Crutchlow, but I just started spinning too much and that’s what caused the tire to run out of grip, let’s say, in the drive area.
“In the last lap I threw it into Turn 2 and that’s where I really lost all my time.
“I was maybe about half a second behind Crutch, I flicked it over quite aggressively into Turn 2 and she nearly came around on me.
“But at the same time Iannone had the exact same problem as me. I think he was on the edge of the tyre. He threw it in and we both almost high-sided on entry, just simply down to having finished the tire on the left side.”
Beyond the strong run to seventh, Miller said his performance throughout the weekend gives him confidence heading into his final two races aboard the Marc VDS Honda.
“(I’m) stoked considering I broke my leg three weeks and a day ago, leading the home grand prix for the first couple of laps and to be mixing it with the boys right ’til the end was good,” he said.
“I haven’t had that many strong dry races. We’ve been there or thereabouts but never for the whole race, and today was a really good run. Okay, we didn’t quite get the top five but we were close, and I’m happy about that.
“I’m happy to have the factory bike behind me of Dani, and also a lot of factory bikes behind me. It was a good weekend in general and I feel really confident now and really happy with myself.
“Looking forward to the last two races. Malaysia, nice and hot, just like my house in Townsville, and Valencia, another left-handed track that I normally go pretty good at.”
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