Jack Miller the man to beat! He promises: “We’ll go for it…”
The KTM rider’s bright start to the 2023 season continued at Le Mans on Friday when he set the pace in each of the two practice sessions, with times of 1'31.449s then 1'30.950s.
He won the French MotoGP two years ago as a factory Ducati rider but his decision to swap bikes this season is paying dividends and he is the man to beat in the sprint and the grand prix.
“We’ll go for it, that’s for certain,” he promised.
“It’s good, you know, the bike is strong.
“Coming from being strong in America, Jerez, then here? Different tracks in their own right.
“It’s amazing. I look forward to every race with this bike.
“It’s an amazing team and an amazing project. I am loving it.
“To come into a race weekend knowing you can be competitive from the get-go is really nice.”
Miller detailed his practice sessions: “A perfect Friday is always good but hopefully we can translate it into a good Saturday and a better Sunday.
“It’s a strange track, Le Mans. You can’t push to your absolute limit like you can at other tracks.
“The grip is low at points. At other points it is fantastic. So you have to take it corner by corner.
“Nonetheless, the bike was good from the get go.
“In the corners or sectors where I wasn’t overly confident this morning, we were able to work on them in P1 and especially P2 to slowly but surely improve.
“To throw that lap in, at the end, was nice.
“The KTM handles well in the wind, it doesn’t seem to get too affected. Turn 1 was really blowing - it’s a hard one, with all the aero on the bikes, to get the thing to go in there! But it seemed to stay stable. I pushed full-on.”
There was multiple crashes on Friday - Marc Marquez notably fell twice, while Jorge Martin and Aleix Espargaro were among the other riders to go down - but Miller believes he is taming the challenging track.
“Turn 7 is always bad, Turn 3 is the classic one. Every year,” he said. “Last year there were 47 crashes in all classes.
“The biggest thing is getting comfortable, understanding how much we can push in each corner. The pace was good on used tyres.
“No rain today! I was hoping for a bit.
“Hopefully if it does come, it doesn’t come in qualifying or in the race.
“We all know it’s going to rain at some point.”
