Miller: We don't even use sixth gear here…
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Without Marc Marquez’s mistakes, last Sunday’s Spanish MotoGP season-opener would probably have ended with Honda’s reigning champion taking victory over the Yamahas of Fabio Quartararo and Maverick Vinales.Check out the MotoGP YouTube channel – CLICK HEREInstead, Marquez’s early save and late highside helped Quartararo and Vinales claim a Yamaha one-two while the contest for the final podium place saw the Ducatis of Andrea Dovizioso and Jack Miller finish a fraction ahead of Franco Morbidelli’s Petronas Yamaha and the KTM of Pol Espargaro.Prior to the race, a Ducati rider (Miller) had only featured in the top 3 once all weekend. But might the Italian factory’s rivals be lulled into a fall sense of security by the pair of Jerez races?As Valentino Rossi warned on Sunday evening, “this year we have a lot of tracks that are good for the Ducati.”Speaking after Friday practice for the second Jerez event, Miller agreed that the Spanish circuit could well be the Desmosedici’s toughest venue of the shortened season.”Yes, I think so. We don’t even use sixth gear here, so it’s like riding in a parking lot for our bike!” said the Australian. “But we’ve got it working pretty well around here and it’s great training for the other tracks.”If we are going half-decent here, it means you’ve got the thing turning a little bit, so it’ll be interesting to see what we can do at the other tracks.”I’m definitely looking forward to tracks like Brno, somewhere sort of old school, where you can let the thing stretch its legs.”After Jerez and Brno, the other venues on the present calendar are Red Bull Ring, Misano, Barcelona, Le Mans, Aragon and Valencia.Miller’s own podium hopes last Sunday were hampered by a numb hand, which he believes was caused by the shape of the brake protector on the end of the throttle grip.”I think a [different] part was already on the bike probably about a half-hour after the race to be honest. We found a piece that we think is working better. But I won’t really know until we get to do 25 laps on Sunday. But just in general, today it felt better,” said Miller, who was seventh fastest on the combined Friday practice timesheets for the Andalucia Grand Prix.”I wasn’t out there trying to break lap records. Especially in the faster corners, I was not taking too many risks. For sure pushing, but keeping a little bit in the tank for FP3 tomorrow, because I know that it’s going to be very important and saving it for then and qualifying,” he added.”4″Already this afternoon the track temperature was a bit hotter than it has been, and the forecast is for it to be even hotter over the weekend. So we’re just trying to understand what tyres to run, because I feel a lot of guys are sort of stuck in their way of focusing only on the [soft rear tyre] tyre that the race winner and most of the grid ran last week, which I think was good and everything, but my feeling is that we can focus on both tyres that we have.”I don’t think we can discount the medium, because the track is always different, day in day out, and what worked last week may not work this week. So we’re keeping our options open, you could say.”A Ducati rider hasn’t won at Jerez since Loris Capirossi in 2006.”5
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