Miller: Valencia MotoGP red flag delay a joke

Jack Miller feels the initial Valencia race should have been red flagged five laps earlier given the worsening weather conditions and has called on changes from MotoGP race direction.

Miller was one of nine riders to out during the first race in Valencia before the red flag at the start of Lap 16, meaning he was unable to make the restart, after ing out on Lap 5 by aquaplaning off at Turn 3.

Having return to the pits while the initial race was still going, Miller was seen remonstrating in pit lane to get the race stopped due to safety conditions as a number of his MotoGP rivals – including the likes of Marc Marquez, Maverick Vinales and Andrea Iannone – also went down before the red flag eventually came out.

Miller felt the visible track conditions plus lap times dropping should have been a clear indicator to race direction to suspend the race sooner than they did.

“It was a joke, they should have stopped the race a long time before,” Miller said. “I am not giving myself an excuse or anything but for example Maverick ed almost in a straight line.

“With the amount of water coming down, we pushed on Friday in the Safety Commission to say ‘hey, with the two red flags in practice on Friday if it gets bad put the red flag out’. For me it was like they were trying to make three-quarters race distance.

“A good five laps earlier [for the red flag] I think as you would have seen the likes of Marc and Maverick still in there.”

Miller refused to push blame on the MotoGP race direction and has urged for them to be more aware of the situation in the future.

“They are trying their hardest that is for sure. The reason I went into the pit lane, was because the guys had gone from low 1m 42s to 1m 44s 1m 45s,” he said. “Three seconds a lap slower when the tyres should be getting better. It was quite clear about that.”

Miller explained he did nothing unusual to trigger his early and lamented a disappointing end to his 2018 campaign, having targeted the 100 points mark only to fall short by nine points, as he looks towards 2019 using the factory-specification Pramac Ducati GP19.

“I just hit my normal line through Turn 3 and same throttle but got on to a puddle or something to aquaplane and looped out,” he said. “I don’t think there was one on the front end, everybody looped out and aquaplaned.

“A day to forget but we are the only ones who ed out s there were a lot of big names down on the ground so to see the race finish like that is a shame.”