Miller 'on a knife edge, couldn’t overtake, massive blow'

"It doesn't feel good. We are all working extremely hard now to understand what the issues are and to try and find a solution as quickly as possible."

The factory Ducati star had been third fastest in free practice before a qualifying fall, and penalty for holding up Fabio Quartararo, demoted him to the fifth row of the grid.

17th in warm-up was a further sign of troubles to come during the race, when Miller suffered from a chronic lack of front-end confidence in his Desmosedici.

Suffering 'moments' whenever he strayed from the optimum grip of the thin racing line, Miller spent most of the 24 laps starring at the back of Miguel Oliveira's KTM.

"We were in a tricky situation," Miller said. "We were missing pace throughout the whole weekend. Chasing our arse a little bit.

"We went in one direction, then we made a change during warm-up and then again for the race, just to try and move the balance around of the bike a little bit and it just didn't give me any kind of contact.

"There's a couple of bumps going into turn one and there's the clean line and then the dirty line. I wasn't able to put a wheel into the dirty line. If I did I'd instantly start to lock the front or have moments.

"It just felt like I was really riding on the knife edge this weekend in terms of I didn't have any margin to play with and I think it's just due to the track conditions, the way the bike is working with the grip out there, and the steps we made throughout the weekend to try and fix that.

"So I kind of had to ride a very clean, tidy race and try not go out of the line at all. I wasn't able to force in the braking zones as I normally can. I wasn't able to use the front like I normally would.

"I didn't make one single overtake throughout the whole race, simply because I didn't have the confidence in the front to go offline or try and force a pass."

Miller was able set a consistent pace but his best lap of the race, on lap 17, was only the 15th quickest.

"I managed the tyres well and really started to push about lap 16 to try and come back to Oliveira and that group. I was able to do it but once I arrived, I wasn't able to have a decent attempt to pass because if I did I would have made a problem for both of us.

"So I got behind Oliveira and that's where I stayed. Very disappointing day.

"The goal was to finish. I did that, but nobody wants to finish 14th. Yeah, we are only 14-seconds behind the winner, but that's MotoGP these days.

"We know what our problems are and thankfully we have a great group of people with us to try and find a solution."

Team-mate Francesco Bagnaia began the race just ahead of Miller in 13th, but was able to recover to fifth by the chequered flag.