Jack Miller explains cause of four-rider pile-up in Indonesian MotoGP
Jack Miller shares his side of the incident which wiped out three rivals
Jack Miller kickstarted a pile-up which wiped three other riders out of the Indonesian MotoGP.
The factory KTM rider took Aleix Espargaro, Alex Marquez and Luca Marini with him out of the Mandalika race on Sunday.
The stewards did not deem the incident worthy of punishment, although Miller has taken responsibility and apologised.
Asked what went wrong, Miller responded: “F***! Your guess is as good as mine!
“It’s one of those things. I got away to a decent start, threaded the needle at Turn 1, through to 2.
“I went in there side-to-side with Aleix and tried to keep the speed, obviously, for the inside for Corner 3.
“As I changed over to Corner 3, [Maverick Vinales] was holding a tight line to cut under whoever was on his outside.
“My main focus was on the battle in hand with Aleix from Turn 2. As we’ve gone into 3, I saw how close I was to Vini.
“As soon as I grabbed the front brake, she went down.
“That’s all she wrote.
“It all closed up. Typical first lap sort of thing.
“I want to apologise to those guys, it was not my intention. It was a racing intention.
“I was trying to negotiate a million different things all at once.”
'I was in the wrong, I made the mistake'
Miller thinks the stewards came to the correct decision to label it a racing incident.
“I saw, at the end of the race, they said ‘no further action’,” he said.
“I agree that’s fair. I admit I was in the wrong. I made the mistake.
“I was the first to hit the ground. I didn’t hit anybody.
“The reason I crashed was to not hit somebody.
“I don’t feel that I did anything over the top. The bike shook on a change of direction.
“As I went down, Vini was tighter than I anticipated. I had to grab the brakes to avoid contact. When I grabbed the brakes, she went down.”
Miller insists that these multi-rider clashes are likelier in the earliest laps if you start far back on the grid.
“They are when you start 16th,” he said.
“It’s chaos back there. In the opening laps, your only opportunity to make some decent passes.
“Because once you’re in a rhythm, it’s very difficult to make the difference.
“You saw with Pecco, Franky, Bez - that group, it was super tough for any of them to do anything.”
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
