Jack Miller: “It’d be nice to beat Martin on track, not a stoppie competition!”

MotoGP title leader Jorge Martin pulled several impressive stoppies into pit lane on his way to second place in Friday practice for the Thai Grand Prix.

But Jack Miller rose to the challenge, prompting a thumbs up from Martin as the Australian passed the Pramac rider with his KTM standing almost vertically on its nose at the end of the session.

“I saw Martin doing his, so I thought I had to hold my own… It’d be nice to beat him on the track and not in a stoppie competition!” Miller smiled afterwards.

The Australian had been ahead of Martin, in fifth, as the time attacks began.

But while Martin moved upwards on fresh rubber, a frustrated Miller slipped to 13th, missing out on the top ten and direct Qualifying 2 access by just 0.155s.

“It’s the story of the last six months,” Miller said. “The pace was good, consistently there on the medium tyre at the beginning of the session. Put some laps on it, felt comfortable.

“My first two time-attacks were good but with the last one I just wasn't able to get it together. Far too many moments. Especially in the middle part of the track,

“I'm just losing the front at Turn 5. Which is then continuing through Turn 6, Turn 7. And then again at Turn 8.

“Every time I try and push, I'm really struggling to finish the corner. Having to try and rely on turning the thing with the rear tyre on a hot lap to get it rotate mid-corner.

“So we'll try and play with that overnight and hopefully come back with a better solution for tomorrow.

“The pace is strong, but the most important thing as we know in MotoGP these days is to get a decent qualifying position and we’re going the long way around yet again.”

Now in the final stages of his factory KTM career, Miller feels he has “made some headway” in recent rounds.

“Just trying to ride around the issues that I'm having. The other two [Brad Binder and Pedro Acosta] are on the new chassis and we're not. So we're just trying to do the best with what we got.

“So I’m working on my riding, really trying to focus on how I can move with my body and absorb the bumps and try not to make it an issue. We'll continue pushing to the very end.”

The good news for the #43 is that the extreme chatter caught on camera at Motegi has not been a factor so far at Buriram.

“Tiny a little bit in Turn 4. But not too bad,” he said.

Prior to his crowd pleasing stoppie in the afternoon, Miller had entertained the crowd with a rolling burnout on the main straight by keeping the throttle open after his practice start went wrong in the morning.

“We just wanted to try the ‘110’ [holeshot] device. I'm not a big fan of the 110 device honestly, as soon as you put the bike down that low on the front the rear starts spinning almost immediately,” Miller explained.

“I took off gently, but as soon as I kind of let the clutch out [the rear tyre] lit up. And then I just carried it on for the fans, I knew I wasn’t using that one again!”

Pedro Acosta (seventh) was the only KTM rider to secure direct Qualifying 2 access with Binder missing out on tenth place by just 0.001s.

Augusto Fernandez was 20th but within 1.3s of the fastest man Marc Marquez (Gresini Ducati).