Miller a "passenger" on slicks during Argentina pole run

Pramac Ducati rider Miller gambled on a switch to a slick tyre-shod bike after the first runs in the pole shoot-out at a drying Termas de Rio Hondo.

This meant he was close to crashing each time he went through a particularly wet patch of the circuit through Turns 7 and 8 – but the Aussie persevered, and finally capitalised at the chequered flag to snatch pole.

Elaborating on why he was able to stay on the bike through the wet parts, Miller said: “It wasn't me. I was just hanging on.

“No, I mean, this moment, I was a passenger. When you're on wet with slick tyres, anything you do, you just got to hang on and hope to God you make it to the other side.

“And that was all I was doing in this section.”

Miller insisted the rest of the track was “quite easy” to navitage on slicks, although he added he had to be careful going over the seams in the tarmac in the final corner.

Asked why he didn't back out of his gamble after nearly crashing, Miller joked: “My mother always said I never listen. And I guess that was the bike telling me something, and I just wasn't listening.

“I knew if I could survive that one corner, the rest of the track was more or less dry.

"I just had to try and make up as much time as I could in the first two sectors, sacrifice that one [corner], and then in the last corner as well, was more or less dry but you have to cross where they've sealed the track, between the two or three layers, each seam was wet.

“I was just in survival mode in those points. It was so slippery, you cannot explain how slippery it is in the puddles on slick tyres. Minute bit of gas and the thing was just going sideways.”

Miller said he kept Khairul Idham Pawi's 2016 Moto3 win at the venue in mind, as the Malaysian – who used slicks on a drying track to win by 26 seconds – demonstrated “how much grip the track had in the wet”.

The Aussie also claimed he took inspiration from the second race of the recent British Superbike season opener at a drying Donington Park.

“I felt it was a calculated risk that I took,” Miller said. “For me, I was watching BSB last weekend, and I saw those guys in the second race [on slicks] with the three degrees ground temperature, with the dry line maybe 30 centimetres wide, and they were pushing like a hell.

“And I mean, we had some good ground temperature today, so I thought – why not?”