Jack Miller “spinning an awful lot” on the straights in Malaysian MotoGP struggle
Pramac Yamaha’s Jack Miller tried to manage the tyres, but was forced to back off and bring the bike home in the Malaysian MotoGP.
After the highs of a front-row start and near-Sprint podium in his home Australian MotoGP, Jack Miller was brought firmly back down to earth with 14th in both races at Sepang.
The Pramac Yamaha rider had already seen the warning signs in Sunday morning warm-up, when a trial with the medium rear tyre confirmed it was too risky to race.
“I tried the medium - it ain’t the way to go,” Miller admitted afterwards. “So, back to the drawing board for the race. The soft’s going to be the one, we’re just going to have to manage it.”
All riders ultimately opted for the soft rear, although the Yamaha quartet were split on front tyre choice: Miller and Fabio Quartararo chose softs, while Alex Rins and Miguel Oliveira preferred the medium.
Postponement of the Moto2 race until after the MotoGP, due to the Moto3 incident, may have helped the Yamahas, who usually suffer more on the Pirelli rubber.
Nonetheless, while Quartararo finished in a better-than-expected fifth (+11s), Rins and Miller were a lengthy ten seconds further behind in 13th and 14th.
“I tried to manage the tyres as best as I could, being very gentle at the beginning of the race to make sure I could get to the end and hopefully have something left in my pocket,” Miller said.
“But I had the same issues as the guys around me. Rins was in the same boat as me, nursing it for most of the race, even though it seemed like he had a little bit more on the corner exits.
“I was just sort of biding my time, hoping it would come back towards me.”
Although the Australian held a consistent pace, tyre spin again proved costly.
“We made some progress on the group in front of us,” Miller continued. “But when I tried to start pushing the last three laps, she was spinning an awful lot in the straights. I was having to short shift in every gear, pretty much.
“So I opted to just bring it home where we were, rather than have another one on the ground. So we finished it out, built on hopefully some decent feedback, and fingers crossed we're more competitive in Portimao.”
Pramac team director Gino Borsoi said the result reflected Yamaha’s limitations in both traction and top speed.
“The race was very difficult, especially for Miller, who couldn‘t find enough grip to perform well on corner exits,” Borsoi said. “And on the straights, as always when you‘re in a group, we were missing a bit of top speed.
“In the end, he ran a race that was in line with the targets we had set.”
Team-mate Miguel Oliveira’s race effectively ended with a front-end crash from 18th at half-distance, rejoining to finish 19th.
“The same thing as Saturday happened – a small front-end crash with no warning,” Oliveira said. “I thought that today, with the medium front tyre, things would be better, but it was hard to manage the grip.
“I was riding comfortably despite the difficulties we were facing, but there wasn‘t much we could do. The ambitions could have been higher, but today the best we could have managed was to finish alongside the two other Yamahas.”
Borsoi added: “Now we head to Portimão, and I hope his home race gives him the boost he needs to achieve a good result, because he really deserves it.”
The Portuguese Grand Prix will be Oliveira’s final home MotoGP appearance before moving to WorldSBK in 2026.
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