CAREER COULD BE ON THE LINE
Miller endures worst season start
Jack Miller came into the MotoGP season with a point to prove and a contract to earn, with the Australian’s two-year deal with Austrian manufacturer KTM expiring at the end of 2024.
Just four races into a crucial campaign, the 29-year-old is, by his own admission, “at rock-bottom”.
Nearing the one-quarter mark of the year, Miller is off to his worst start statistically to a season since he was a MotoGP rookie in 2015 – and time is running out.
With just 14 points from four Grands Prix – 22 points in all, if you include his meagre returns from a quartet of sprint races at each round – Miller sits 14th in the championship standings after last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, where he failed to score a point and was left livid after being taken out by Ducati rider Franco Morbidelli as the pair squabbled for crumbs on the fringes of the top 10.
WHAT’S GONE WRONG?
It would be easier to list what hasn’t gone awry for the Australian in 2024, which began with a lap two tip-off in the opening Grand Prix in Qatar before he remounted and finished last, in 21st place and 42 seconds behind the race-winner and reigning world champion, Francesco Bagnaia.
Round two in Portugal provided some respite with fifth, but Miller’s best points haul of the year came with an asterisk after he’d lost places to KTM teammate Brad Binder and rising Spanish star Pedro Acosta (GasGas) to spend most of the race in eighth, moving forward late as Bagnaia and Marc Marquez fell ahead of him, and Maverick Vinales had his gearbox seize and was spat off his Aprilia on the final lap.
Miller stormed to third on the first lap from 11th on the grid at the Americas GP before tyre wear woes consigned him to a 13th-place result, and then came the pain of Spain, where he finished third for his best result of his maiden KTM campaign 12 months previously.
At Jerez, Miller started from a season-worst 15th after KTM’s mechanics couldn’t affix his rear wheel in time to begin qualifying, crashed from the sprint race on the opening lap before finishing 14th, and then was pinballed by Morbidelli in the Grand Prix proper.
“I’ve been saying this a lot recently, but obviously not the day we wanted,” he said in Jerez.
“I got away to a decent start and tried to go with the boys at the front, and felt pretty comfortable until about lap four when the pace got upped a little bit more and I just couldn’t run it.
“Franky (Morbidelli) decided he wanted to make a gap where there was no room, and it resulted in us both having an early shower. I don’t know if I’ve run over a black cat or walked under a ladder … but we’re just struggling to get luck turning our way.”
WHAT’S THE WAY OUT?
Qualifying better would be a start. Miller qualified inside the front two rows of the grid nine times in 20 races last year, but just once this season.
Miller has just one top-six start all season (Portugal) and is yet to finish a race higher than he started, while he’s been out-qualified three times in four Grands Prix by Acosta and twice by Binder, riders on the same machinery.
Better in-race tyre management – Miller’s reputation is of a rider who goes too hard, too early and has little rubber left to fight with late in races – would undoubtedly help, too. A clean weekend free from mechanical gremlins and procedural potholes would assist in rebuilding his shaken confidence.
WHAT’S HIS FUTURE?
After one of the most impressive starts to a MotoGP career in history, Acosta’s ascension to KTM’s main team in Miller’s place was discussed as early as round three in Texas, where the manufacturer’s motorsport director Pit Bierer was asked whether he’d consider switching his riders between the KTM and GasGasbranded squads during 2024.
“Pedro’s achievements are an absolute highlight but no, that is not an option for us,” Bierer told German publication Motorsport Magazin.
Miller isn’t oblivious to the paddock chatter, and knows what he has to do to stop the rot. “I’ve been at rock-bottom before, and fingers crossed we’re at it now and we can build back up,” he said. “We understand the issues and we know where we need to improve, it’s just a matter of putting it all together.”