There was a period of time earlier this season that everything seemed to be coming up Miller.
Jack Miller was defying expectations that a switch from Ducati to KTM would mean this chapter of his career would be defined by troubleshooting and development work with little reward on race weekends. The 2023 RC16 has turned out to be a podium contender and arguably the biggest challenger to the Aussie’s former team.
The know-how Miller transferred from Italy to Austria shouldn’t — and hasn’t — been underestimated in KTM taking its latest step towards becoming an eventual MotoGP title contender.
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But somewhere along the way the magic has dulled. Miller hasn’t troubled the top three on a Sunday since his podium in Jerez, and two crashes in the interim have left him eighth in the standings and 64 points behind teammate Brad Binder.
He almost ended up with another non-score last time out at KTM’s home race in Austria, but it wasn’t down to a crash — instead it was mystifyingly dire race pace that left him a helpless 15th after 28 laps. He’d qualified fourth.
The form slump couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Aussie, whose Austrian employer has saddled itself with the intractable problem of signing up five riders for 2024 despite fielding only four bikes.
He and Binder at the factory team have largely been inoculated from speculation that they could be shuffled to make room for the inbound Moto2 leader Pedro Acosta, but Pol Espargaró’s successful comeback from injury at satellite team Gas Gas has added a new level of complexity to the situation.
“I’m confirmed. No question,” Miller told media when asked if he could find himself caught up in the team’s self-inflicted silly-season drama.
But regardless of the standing of his KTM contract, for his own sake he must find a way to cure his race-pace ills.
First, a dose of realism: while Miller’s results have tailed off relative to Binder, they haven’t been dire, and his raw pace has remained impressively strong.
In the last five races his average qualifying result has been 5.2. Only once, in the Netherlands, has he started off the first two rows. Twice he’s qualified inside the top three. With eight Ducati bikes to contend with, that’s nothing to sneeze at.
In that same period teammate Binder has an average qualifying result of 7.4, more than two places behind the Aussie.
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Miller has always been stronger on qualifying day than in the races, so it’s not so surprising to see that the intrateam form book flips during a grand prix distance on Sunday, although even then he’s only once finished a race lower than eighth, with his DNFs more costly than his classified finishes.
Clearly the hyperventilating over his performances is overdone.
But nonetheless the downwards trend from the optimistic start to the season is clear, and it has the Townsville native searching for answers.
“It was just a struggle and I don’t know why or how yet,” Miller wrote on his website after his scramble for a single point in Austria. “I was suffering with missing grip from the very beginning, and the last eight laps were about trying to survive out there.
“I started getting into trouble with guys passing me on the straight. My top speed was down simply because the exit wasn’t there out of the corners.
“Braking felt good — the bike in the front-end was actually pretty stable and I was able to catch back up in the middle part of the lap — but into all the straights I just couldn’t accelerate.
“We probably need to go back to the drawing board, to be honest.
“We made some changes a few races ago in Assen and it doesn’t seem like it’s been working great. So now we try to maybe take a step back and evaluate the changes that we’ve made to attempt to go forward.”
Miller explained that the changes made in the Netherlands were less about his instinct on the bike and more about trying to follow the set-up direction of the other KTM riders.
“We rotated the bike to the back,” he said, per Crash. “Since that moment I’ve been struggling a lot.
“When the grip is low we’re not able to accelerate well, we’re not able to keep the tyre in the bike and I’m not able to carry the corner speed, then when the tyre is starting to drop you’re relying solely on the rear tyre.
“[It] is giving me a good front feeling that I can brake a little bit maybe harder, but in general I’m then braking too much to try and rely on the bike to turn.
“So I think the biggest thing for us is taking a step back, going back to our old setting and maybe finding a little bit of a different direction to work for myself.”
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That means revisiting the way he rode at Ducati in an attempt to rekindle his successful start to the year, when his fresh to the KTM bike.
“I have a particular riding style and I don’t think it’s working with this setting,” he continued.
“Going back to the other setting I think will be like putting on an old boot.
“I know that bike. It’s generally how I had my Ducati set up, and it was just trying something out of the box with this setting.
“But we’ve tried this setting and it hasn’t been the case of improving, so we’ll try to go back and work in another direction, understanding that I need to be able to have this front confidence to carry the corner speed — and you carry that corner speed all the way to the end of the straight, so that’s the biggest thing.”
The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya should be a productive track for both Miller and his RC16, though that’s not saying much given KTM’s 2023 bike has developed itself into a real all-rounder capable of performing well at most venues.
Miller’s record here is reasonable, comprising one podium and three other top-five finishes, while KTM has one previous win here courtesy of Miguel Oliveira in 2021.
“Barcelona is a track I like, where I managed to be competitive in the past and, consequently, it leaves me with good memories,” Miller said, per GPOne.
“We have to improve in mid corner and try to get greater speed when exiting.
“We have some ideas, and I’m convinced that here at Montmeló we can be more competitive than at the Red Bull Ring.”
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
Every practice, qualifying and race of the 2023 Catalan Grand Prix is live and ad-break free during racing on Kayo and Fox Sports.
First free practice is on Friday from 6:45pm (AEST), with timed practice for qualifying from 11:00pm.
The final free practice session starts on Saturday at 6:10pm ahead of qualifying at 6:50pm and the sprint race at 11pm.
The Sunday warm-up is at 5:45pm, with pre-race coverage following at 9:15pm ahead of lights-out for the Catalan Grand prix at 10pm.
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