Marco Bezzecchi
Jack Miller delivered his best qualifying result since joining Pramac as he took third at the Australian Grand Prix. The home favourite ends a near two-year wait for a front-row start.
Miller hasn’t qualified as high as third since the 2023 Valencia GP, when he was a KTM factory rider. But he ended the drought despite having to progress through Q1.
The Australian set the early benchmark in the second session and improved late on to ensure he lines up alongside factory star Fabio Quartararo and Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi.
Miller had been eliminated in Q2 at every race since the summer break, so this was a surprising turnaround, but it came at the perfect moment.
Casey Stoner surprised by Jack Miller’s Australian Grand Prix qualifying pace
Miller’s compatriot Casey Stoner is in attendance for the Australian Grand Prix and gave his immediate reaction to TNT Sports after qualifying.
He pointed out that Miller had been fastest in the opening practice session, much to the delight of the crowd. However, Stoner was worried for the 30-year-old when he saw him make a mistake at the start of Q2.
But Miller’s call to use the hard tyres surprisingly paid off. Alex Rins and Miguel Oliveira were only 12th and 16th on the other M1 bikes.
“He was quick from FP1,” Stoner said. “Everybody was very, very happy to see Jack hit the top of the timesheets. I was watching him on that first lap of Q2, and he lost the rear end a little bit, and I thought, ‘Oh, he’s not on new tyres because he used them in that first session.’
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“And then I noticed he was on the hard, so there might be a bit of a surprise there that the soft tyre isn’t working quite as well as you’d think around here, as he seemed to get the job done on the harder compound.”
Jack Miller was concerned after following Fabio Quartararo
Speaking to the same broadcaster, Miller recalled that he nearly ‘highsided’ twice after he came out of the pit lane for his second run. The world feed showed him taking a precarious trip through the gravel.
Miller was able to follow Quartararo at the end of the session, though. And while he fell away from the Frenchman at the end of the lap, it proved to be a useful reference in one of Yamaha’s best sessions in recent memory.
“I was honestly really shocked,” he said. “I was just really happy to get through Q1. In Q2, I put the hard front on for the first time this weekend, and I was really, really happy with the initial feeling on that. We improved the time on the used tyres.
“And then the second one, I struggled honestly. I went out of pit lane and I don’t know if the tyre was cold or something was going on with it, but I nearly highsided as soon as I came out at turn one. I went into two and it did the exact same, so I had to go through the gravel.
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“I spent two laps nearly just trying to scrub the tyre and get some temperature, but thankfully I caught up to that group with Fabio.
“Honestly, I thought I’d done a bad lap because he gapped me. He pulled away from me in the last sector, especially in the last corner, but then I came over the line and it was a 26:7. I thought, ‘This lap must have been good’, and sure enough, it was.”
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