Jack Miller was overjoyed to secure his fifth third place result of the 2019 MotoGP in the season finale at Valencia, his third podium in the final six races.
The Aussie performed strongly in his sophomore campaign with the Pramac Racing satellite Ducati squad, closing the year eighth in the riders standings-just 11 points behind factory Ducati man Danilo Petrucci despite recording two extra DNF’s.
Miller thinks his Valencia performance was ‘definitely’ his best of the year, having run runner-up Fabio Quartararo close in the closing stages of the encounter and taking the chequered flag just 2.4 seconds down on winner Marc Marquez.
“Yeah I definitely think so (best ride of the year). It’s my fifth podium, again another third but we’ll take it,” said Miller.
“I feel I rode a sensible race and just tried to manage it, I seemed to struggle in some stages as I had a big moment at Turns 11 and 12 with the wind, the wind was quite strong at Turn 6 as well and it was really hard to get the thing in there.
“It was treacherous out there so I was mainly riding to the conditions, I seemed to get into a second wind during the race and got down into the mid 31s and started to come back towards Fabio and I thought ‘hang on this could be alright’, he had a few little mistakes but to be honest he was just maintaining his gap.
“I was trying to catch him as hard as I could and Marc was just the puppeteer, he was just controlling us all. He came back towards us at the end, but I think he was just cruising so we need to find a bit over the winter.
“Even so it’s an amazing way to finish off the season, it’s been a great year with the Pramac racing team and I can’t thank them enough for giving me the opportunity and I’m looking forward to come back stronger next year.”
Miller was initially linked with a shock switch with Petrucci at the factory team next year following his strong end to the year, the struggling Italian having not finished inside the top five since the German grand prix in July.
Ducati sporting director Paolo Ciabatti quashed these rumours when asked during the first day of the pre-’20 test at Valencia, stating the whispers of such a switch were “b******t.”
