Jack Miller: Mega race from Brad, I couldn’t believe it!

Once out-front Binder was never headed, keeping calm under pressure from Marco Bezzecchi to take his first victory since 2021 by less than 0.1s.

Meanwhile Miller - the star of last weekend’s Portimao Sprint on his KTM debut - had a tougher time, floating between 11th and 13th before taking tenth when Aleix Espargaro crashed out in the closing stages.

“It was the hardest I have ridden for zero points, but I was trying really hard to catch back to Fabio and Martin in front of me and I was making some headway there,” said Miller.

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“Brad showed the bike has all the capabilities. He qualified one position in front of me on the grid and he made it work, that’s for certain. I could not believe it! I got a decent start…but when I started the third lap and saw he was in front. What happened there?!

“He rode a mega race as we all saw. He’s the Sunday man and nowadays a Saturday man as well.

"The bike has great potential and I could make some decent overtakes and put it where I wanted to, so no real negatives but I need to understand what happened at the beginning of the race because I had quite a few moments, a few big slides where I wasn’t going anywhere and then it got better and better.”

The Australian, who felt his engine was held back by too much electronic assistance in the damp qualifying, added: “It's all practice for tomorrow. That [Sprint] is probably the most intensive ‘FP4’ you can do in terms of setting up for the [Sunday] race.

“At the end of the day, they are races and some of the hardest fights I’ve ever had have been for, like, 16th place.”

Miller has now slipped to joint sixth in the world championship with Johann Zarco, while Binder climbs to fourth.