Jack Miller got “grabbed by the guts and pulled into the tyre” at Sepang

After miraculously escaping serious injury in a race-stopping incident at Sepang, Jack Miller will return for his final MotoGP as a KTM rider at Barcelona this weekend.

A chain reaction between Alex Marquez, Brad Binder and Fabio Quartararo ended with the Australian being knocked from his machine in the opening corner of the Malaysian round.

Shocking images saw Miller tangled in the rear wheel of Quartararo’s Yamaha, with his helmet whipped around by the tyre before his legs were run over by Joan Mir's Honda.

Speaking about the incident for the first time on Thursday, Miller said: 

“I feel good, honestly. Lucky to walk away from that one as good as I did, seeing some of the images with my hand through the rear tyre of Fabio's bike and Joan using my legs as a double [jump]!

“I was pretty lucky to come out of it relatively unscathed.

“I had a killer hangover on Monday, but apart from that everything else was was relatively good. I was back on the bicycle on Tuesday and a nice weekend at home with the family - in a lot warmer conditions than what we've got here - did me some good.

“So feel ready to to get underway and hopefully finish out my tenure at KTM on a good note.”

Miller said it’s a case of “shut your eyes and hope for the best” during such incidents.

“Tuck and roll as they say, but I think there was a little bit more rolling than tucking to be honest if I look at the pictures!

“But no, you can't do anything. I didn't know what was coming. I didn't know what was gonna happen.

“You see how sticky those Michelin tyres are. Grabbed me by my guts and pulled me into the tyre and then managed to grab my head and pull that back around through the tyre once more.

“So that gives you a a slight indication of how good these tyres are when they can grab the helmet and pick it up off the ground and pull it around like that.

“Like I said, it just comes down to luck more than anything. So just happy to be here and not nursing any injuries and going into the weekend with a free mind.

“I feel lucky. Extremely lucky.”

The 29-year-old insisted it won’t be playing on his mind.

“No, it's nothing mentally. At the end of the day, I'm nearly 30 years old. I've been doing this since I was four years old and I've had a lot of crashes in my time!

“So you're able to put it out of your mind pretty much as soon as it happens. And obviously for us the main thing is to get back on the bike.

“It's the one thing that I love. It's the one thing that I'm good at, or semi-good at, on some days, let's say! So it's quite easy to put it out of your mind and get back to work.”

This weekend’s finale has been moved at short notice from Valencia to Barcelona due to the devastating floods.

“Obviously conditions are a little bit different than when we're normally here, I’m wearing two jackets and long shorts! But looking forward to it, I think [the weather] will throw another spanner in the works which should make for an interesting weekend,” Miller said.

“Obviously devastated to not be racing in Valencia. Thoughts are with all the people affected by the floods there. Just seeing the images throughout the week from the other side of the world, it's terrible what those families are facing. And our hearts go out to each and every one of them.

“Fingers crossed that this weekend can hopefully provide 50 minutes for them to hopefully take their minds off the problems that are going on at the moment and enjoy what should be an epic weekend of racing.

“So it's nice to be racing again and obviously on this side of the world, back to, let's say, the home of MotoGP and only a few hundred kilometres from where we should be. So it's cool to be back here and. Yeah, I think the weekend should be relatively interesting.”

The cool conditions mean Michelin is offering an unprecedented seven different tyre options.

“There's seven tyres, but I feel like not all of them are usable,” Miller said. “Looking at the H on the front, that's borderline during the race weekend, It takes 3 laps to start working on the left when we come here [in the summer], so I don't think that'll be getting put on a rim. I think it's just a backup more than anything.

“But the other tyres look relatively good. At the end of the day, Valencia is very similar where it's a lot of left-hand corners and then you go to the right, whereas there are a lot of right-hand corners and go into the left.

“So I think they can build the tyre to suit and we should be alright in that department.

“Obviously they've come with some different options because they don't really know what to expect with the temperature. But on the short turnaround they've had, I think they've done a good job in terms of bringing a tyre they hope will suit this track.

“We'll see what the grip levels are like. Generally, here we're seeing track temps of 60° plus and we'll be lucky to see 6° at some points over the weekend. So it'll be interesting to see how the rear tyre works.

“I've ridden here on the Panigale and stuff earlier in the year. The grip’s generally a bit better when it's a bit cooler around here, temperature is always an issue with these long hard accelerating corners.

“So I think we'll see some pretty bloody fast lap times throughout the weekend.”

Miller is 14th in the world championship, 13 points clear of future Pramac Yamaha team-mate Miguel Oliveira.

Miller and Oliveira will ride an M1 for the first time at the Tuesday test.