Jack Miller is back at a track he enjoys and explained that, broadly speaking, he’s at the Japanese GP with the same bike as last year and is still searching for a weekend where he can put everything together for a strong performance. Qualifying was important and a challenge, given his ongoing issues with rear-end grip.
The Australian KTM rider began by recalling his 2023 performance, where he felt he could have done better, in an attempt to have an absolutely memorable weekend, not forgetting that he essentially has the same bike: ‘I’m looking forward to this race, it’s a track I really like. Last year was one of those races where we were left wondering what could have been, due to the cold conditions. I felt strong all weekend, was on the front row, was fourth in the Sprint, and we’ll see what we can do this year, obviously with new rear tires, but the bike is relatively unchanged compared to what we had here last year in terms of chassis, swingarm, and so on.’
His priority, he said, is qualifying for Q2: ‘We’ll see what the bike’s potential is and apart from that, we want to have a solid weekend, because obviously last Sunday we didn’t have the result we wanted and we’ll try to recover from that. I think the most important thing is to have a decent qualifying, because missing Q2 in the last two weeks cost us a lot and we’ll try to solve that this weekend.’
When asked about his expectations for the rear end, whether he expects fewer problems at Motegi, the Australian replied: ‘You say it’s stop-start but then we have those flowing corners, and that kind of shit, stop-start makes me nervous and that in the middle will make me nervous but until we’re there tomorrow and understand, we’ll have to wait. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, it’s generally a track I like and I’ve been good in the past and I hope we can make things work this weekend and have a solid weekend from start to finish.’
Regarding qualifying, Miller explained how grip has been a problem, with the rear of the bike losing its best contact with the ground at certain points, which ends up having a big impact:
– It seems that, as I said in Mandalika, it’s been very difficult, especially in terms of lap time, to put everything together and you know, when you’re on the limit of these tires and you’re holding on laterally, you grip (the asphalt, in terms of grip) especially more when you’re trying to attack in a corner with the new tire, it seems that it’s a bit of a nightmare where this grip is lost in strange parts and then, in Mandalika even more, more than here, you end up going wide and miss the line (of the race), the exit and all that speed and ruins it. We don’t have that margin to play with, especially when you’re on a fast lap and trying to connect everything and be almost perfect, and that’s been one of the most difficult things in terms of time.”