Miller witnessed Turn 3 carnage

TV footage was inconclusive and some of the riders involved said they weren't sure what happened, but Jack Miller got a perfect view of the first lap carnage in Sunday's Czech Republic MotoGP.

Maverick Vinales, Bradley Smith and wild-card Stefan Bradl were all sent tumbling at turn three of the Brno race.

"It was right in front of me. I had to slow down because of it," said Miller, who was caught up in a first lap accident at the previous Sachsenring round. "Bradl just tried to pass us all in one go, locked the front and it was dominoes from there.

"He hit Smith, Smith went down and their two bikes cleaned up Maverick, who went over the highside. It was a nasty little crash. I had to grab the brakes and almost stop just to wait for the bikes to slide past my front tyre.

"I thought, 'here we go, it's déjà vu all over again'. I was fortunate enough not to get too tangled up in it this week. But I mean here's always a hard one, especially after all the Dunlop rubber is on the ground and we go out there, trying to make up a couple of positions and it is slippery."

Smith agreed with Miller's explanation: “I was braking into Turn 3 and Stefan took a lunge up the inside and tucked the front. His bike slid into mine and then I slid into Maverick and we all went down."

However HRC rider Bradl said he wasn't sure what happened: "Unfortunately, I was just braking into Turn 3 with Viñales not far ahead when I felt a blow and then found myself in the gravel. I looked around and saw that also Bradley was involved in the incident. Honestly, I didn’t understand exactly what happened.

"It’s a real shame because I had got a very good start and I’m sure I would have been able to recover some positions. Unfortunately, I’ve got a lot of pain pain in my right shoulder. At the Medical Centre, examination luckily ruled out fractures, but the ligaments are quite stretched. We have to see tomorrow how I feel for the test.”

Factory Yamaha's Vinales said he didn't know who had hit him.

While the fallen trio went down and out, Miller - who finished the first lap in 15th place - improved to twelfth by the chequered flag.

"Once I got back into my rhythm, I passed Morbidelli and Syahrin, and closed the gap to Bautista," said the Pramac Ducati rider. "But right as I got to him, my tyres dropped and I lost speed.

"He ran wide and I went in front of him, but I just couldn't get away. I lost 0.6s per lap and that was my rhythm for the rest of the race. So then he got back past me and he was on the soft tyre and I just watched him go away.

"I was doing my best to stay with him because I thought the soft was going to die off and I was on the hard. But it looked like it did the absolute opposite. He just got quicker and quicker.

"We had some strange spinning in a straight line, which we have to look at. The rear tyre temperature went up maybe a little too high, because of the straight-line spinning.

"It was cooler today and it looked like maybe the soft was working a bit better today than in the 60-degree ground temperature we had yesterday! It was a surprise, definitely. I felt really good when I caught Bautista, but once I got past I had nothing."

The Australian is tenth in the world championship heading to next weekend's Austrian round, before which there is an official day of testing at Brno on Monday.