Australia’s Jack Miller had come to terms with his MotoGP career being over before a left-field link to 11th-hour lifeline with Yamaha finally came to fruition last month.
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Speaking to Fox Sports’ ‘Pit Talk’ podcast, the KTM rider, mired in his worst season since 2016, revealed he’d told family and friends to be prepared for this month’s Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix to be his last on home shores before a deal with Pramac Racing, who he rode a Ducati for from 2018-20, saw him secure the 22nd and final seat on next year’s grid.
“It was well and truly dicey … [my career] was done in my books at one point over the summer [mid-season] break,” Miller said ahead of this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix at Motegi.
“We’d had that conversation with the family and basically said ‘come to Phillip Island, it’s probably going to be our last one’. That was a pretty s**tty time to deal with … you had to come to terms with it.
“The thing that pissed me off the most was that it wasn’t on my terms. It was a tough thing to deal with, but I do genuinely feel like I’ve still got more to give. The determination and the work I put in for this season to get, up until this point, bugger-all out of it has been a very, very hard pill to swallow.”
PIT TALK PODCAST: In the Japanese GP preview episode of ‘Pit Talk’, Renita Vermeulen and Matt Clayton are joined by Red Bull KTM Factory Racing’s Jack Miller to discuss his tough 2024 campaign, memories of his most dominant MotoGP win at Motegi in 2022, and extending his career with Pramac Yamaha next season.
Miller, who began his two-year contract at KTM with a bang after moving from Ducati with a sprint race and Grand Prix podium in Spain in 2023, has managed just one top-five Grand Prix result this season, and sits 15th in the standings after 15 of the 20 rounds.
The 29-year-old was told during the Italian Grand Prix in June that he was being replaced by star Spanish rookie Pedro Acosta at KTM’s factory team for 2025, and potential links with KTM’s Tech3 team and Trackhouse Aprilia came to naught, leaving his career on life support until Yamaha came calling.
“Things haven’t worked out like I’d planned this year, that’s for certain … it’s been the polar opposite of what I’d anticipated,” he said.
“We hit the ground running [in 2023] with the podiums and it was going pretty good, and even to the tail-end of last year, at Motegi we had a solid race going, crashed out of the lead in Valencia … there were a lot of positives towards the back-end of last year.
“But this year, there’s been no hiding the fact that I haven’t gelled at all with the bike and the tyres … we’re still trying to understand these things and to rectify the situation, not only for myself but for the team going forward.
“We’ve had no real updates in terms of parts, chassis, swingarms, stuff like that to try to rectify this issue we’re having with the vibration caused by the rear tyre.”
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Miller, who has ridden for Honda, Ducati and KTM in a premier-class career that began in 2015, said renewing ties with Pramac, and getting the chance to race Yamaha’s YZR-M1 machine that was a title contender up until the past two seasons, was “almost like a dream come true”.
“Through the whole [Jorge] Lorenzo, [Valentino] Rossi era, and then even with Jonas [Folger] and guys like that, it seemed like at one point every bloke that hopped on [the Yamaha], whether they were a rookie or not, were getting podiums on that thing and it looked like a dream to ride,” he said.
“It’s changed in the latter years, but the bones of that bike are still a fantastic bike. I believe if we work up from that and try to bring some of our experience and ideas across, hopefully we can start to get together.
“Having the opportunity to work with [team owner] Paolo [Campinoti] and the team at Pramac … it’s like a second home for me.”
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