Miller "pissed off" with Mandalika MotoGP test crash

The Australian was a low-key 15th on the timesheets at the end of Sunday in Indonesia having focused his efforts on race running.

His day was almost compromised by a crash early into his first race simulation, however, when the balance of his Ducati GP22 was thrown off when he took onboard a full fuel tank.

Angry at the mistake, Miller was able to return to his Ducati garage for his second bike and finish his programme – which he admitted was “important to me”.

“Ready, no - but when are we ever ready?” he replied when asked if he felt ready for the Qatar season-opener on 6 March.

“I mean, the race is the race. It’s completely different. I feel as ready as we can be to head there.

“As you can tell by my face, it was pretty hot and a long day.

“But anyway we got through what we needed to today. Unfortunately, I had a little crash on the first of my long runs, just putting the full tank.

“Most of the time the boys are just filling the tank up, so to get the full tank you need to take the fuel tank out and once we did that just the balance of the bike was a little bit off.

“I was struggling the first four or five laps and was struggling to hit my line.

“Eventually I went onto the dirty part of the track and went over.

“So, that pissed me off a little bit because it was just one of those crashes that didn’t need to happen.

“Fortunately enough, I was able to come back and get another bike, regroup and go back out again.

“That was important to me, just to get that race simulation under my belt.”

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Teammate Francesco Bagnaia was fifth at the end of the day having also worked on his race running.

The 2021 championship runner-up praised Ducati’s work during the Indonesia test as “incredible”.

“We have prepared the bike to race well in Qatar,” he said. “Our pace and consistency was OK.

“We decided to do the race simulation with the medium tyre. That was not the best option, but we were very constant in terms of pace.

“We’re working a lot and still we need to work more.

“But, with only five days of testing, you need to try everything in less laps than normal.

“But it’s OK like this. Finally, we found a compromise that I like, so I think in Qatar we will start well.”