Jack Miller “felt strong”, puts Yamaha into Q2 at Balaton MotoGP

Jack Miller edges out fellow Yamaha riders to secure direct Qualifying 2 access at the Hungarian MotoGP.

After a punishing Mugello weekend, the stop-go nature of Balaton Park helped a trio of Yamaha riders to fight for direct Qualifying 2 access on Friday.

But only one of them made the cut.

That rider was Pramac’s Jack Miller, who claimed the final top ten place by 0.111s over Fabio Quartararo and 0.165s over team-mate Toprak Razgatlioglu.

“Obviously pretty happy to have gone directly through today,” said Miller, who fought back from 19th place in FP1.

“I had a good feeling this morning, but then when we hopped on the second bike I was really struggling a lot.

“We were able to solve a lot of the issues this afternoon. I felt strong on the used tyres, then put in some new tyres and felt even better.”

“Nobody did a perfect lap”

Miller believes there is still more to come from both himself and the Yamaha package.

“It's one of those tracks where nobody did a perfect lap. With these one line chicanes you always feel like you can do more. But it's so easy to make a mistake.

“I think that we have a little bit more left on the table for tomorrow but we'll have to wait and see.”

Miller confirmed the stop-go Balaton layout suits the new V4 much better than Mugello.

“I think the nature of the track, quite slow, stop and go - obviously still we have our issues, but we can make a little bit more of a difference here I believe.

“We had all four bikes pretty close together. Our bike stops pretty good and it changes directions not too bad, so definitely an improvement from last year, especially around here.

“I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do for tomorrow.”

While Miller was much faster than he had been in the same session a year ago, he was slightly slower than Quartararo's Friday best (also for tenth place) on last year's Inline machine.

Honda also put one rider directly through to Qualifying 2, with rookie Diogo Moreira claiming eighth.