The MotoGP world championship returns this weekend to Japanese territory, after not having contested the Japanese Grand Prix in the last two seasons. The Asian appointment is special, and there were not a few pilots who recognized having missed Motegi.
Jack Miller is one of them, who on Thursday said he was “glad” to return to Japan. ” It’s nice to be back in this part of the world after not racing here for so long, and little by little I’m getting closer to home.”
Although some of his fellow roster suffer from jet lag, travel and jet lag , Miller acknowledged that he enjoys the Asian tour. “I enjoy the trip, the events… time passes much faster. On Sunday we pack up and go to the next circuit, if you had a bad result you can quickly reset and focus on a new weekend, and if you had a good result, you are looking forward to the next race to maintain the trend”.
In statements to the press, the Ducati rider valued the changes introduced in the format of the weekend, which will only have one free practice session on Friday. “We will have to change the training schedule. The first session is a little over an hour, so I think in the end we will have the same training time.”
“In FP1 we will try to get an idea of the state of the track, know its level of grip and where the potholes are, and in the end focus a bit on the race pace and, if there is time, try a fast lap. We already did it in Argentina, so I think there shouldn’t be too many problems. “Besides, that’s how we practice for next year,” he added with a sneer.
In addition, Motegi is a track that benefits from the characteristics of the Desmosedici, and that encourages a factory that has accumulated five consecutive victories. “Ducati is going through a moment in which it is dominating, both here [in MotoGP] and in WorldSBK. The riders are very good, there is no doubt about that, but the bike works well. Having eight fast bikes, with good and experienced riders , you get a lot of data and you can understand what they do differently and get to combine it to know how to make the perfect lap. I think that is what is helping us the most, “said Jack.
“But this project doesn’t happen overnight. I’ve seen the progress since I started in 2018 until now. The bike, in general, works in all conditions, be it wet, dry, one circuit or another. We managed to make it It works on very different tracks, and I think it’s ideal. You don’t want to have a bike that only goes fast on tracks with a lot of grip and a design that benefits it, but you want it to go well in all conditions, because in the end we race twenty big prizes in different countries.
However, not everything is a bed of roses, and the Australian wanted to highlight that he is still having a hard time getting the bike to turn. ” It’s part of the character of the bike, and it’s still difficult for us to make changes of direction. For example, in the corkscrew in Aragón we lost some time. Also, when you come out of a chicane onto a straight you lose acceleration in the first meters, and that’s something we can’t do. It’s something we can still improve on.”
In addition, he made it clear that the championship has changed a lot in the last three years . So much so that the starting device, now an everyday item, was released around that time: “The device that regulates the height of the bike was designed for circuits like this one, with a lot of acceleration and braking. The bikes have improved a lot since 2019, and That was one of the first grands prix where we used the starting device, and in Thailand I started using it for the whole lap.”
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