Jack Miller and Pedro Acosta starred in one of the most exciting battles of the Thai GP, with the rookie eventually beating his opponent, precisely the rider he will replace at the factory KTM next year. The condition of the tire was not on the Australian’s side, who couldn’t avoid some mistakes.
The #43, who in 2025 will ride alongside Miguel Oliveira in the new era of Pramac Racing as a Yamaha satellite team, recalled the fight with the #31 and how he couldn’t avoid some mistakes, especially due to the high wear of the front tire of his RC16, which occurred early in the race:
– I was no longer able to stop, I cooked the front very early in the race as I had said before and I had a lot of graining on the inside right side of the tire. I was trying really hard to stay with Pedro but I made a mistake and went in too deep and had a big lock-up very early in the braking zone of turn 3 and I was obviously wide and then my exit was compromised and he was on the inside and we got caught up and then he got out in front of me and got away with the front tire and I was in the wrong place, so there wasn’t much more I could do there to be honest.
Before that, Miller was third and had Jorge Martín in his sights, but he was unable to try the attack on the world championship leader: ‘I felt I could get closer but honestly as soon as I started to push and after passing Brad [Binder] I realized I couldn’t push too hard because every time I tried to make a difference in braking I felt the front tire was overheating’.
This overheating was easy to feel and made the tire behave in a difficult way to manage: ‘You could feel it and there in turn 7, 8 and then in 9 it was literally like jello and I was trying to do what I could do, trying to gain time where I could, or lose time where I lost, because I had many more strong points on the track than weak ones. I was trying, I really was’.