MotoGP Austin: Miller enjoys ‘clean scrap’ with Rins

Jack Miller’s Argentina woes were firmly in the past on Sunday night as the Ducati Lenovo rider stood on the COTA MotoGP podium.

Having led for the majority of Austin’s 20-lap race, Miller was forced to settle for third at the flag, after first Enea Bastianini then Alex Rins denied him his hard-fought spoils. Despite that however, the Australian was buzzing from the day’s achievement and eager to replicate it as the paddock packs up and ships back to Europe.

“It’s lovely to be back on the box, first time this year,” Miller said from the Circuit of the Americas.

“I was thinking it was gonna be a gold one up in the trophy cabinet but it wasn’t to be today. I threw everything I had at it, was pushing from the beginning.

“It was a long, lonely old race out the front there,” he admitted. “Just trying to push away at my laptimes. I started to struggle a little bit at the end and Enea was able to come past. Then I made too many mistakes once I got passed by Enea, just getting sucked in on the braking zones and stuff like that. That’s kind of what cost me the second place as well so a bit disappointed about that. But, nevertheless we had a solid weekend and we needed that.

“It was nice to get back on the box, few more points on the board. So we’ll go into the European part of the campaign now on reasonable terms and hopefully be able to kick things off.”

Having struggled for the entirety of the Argentina weekend last time out, a front row start and a podium in Texas was quite the comeback for the 27-year-old.

“Generally seems to be the way with me,” Miller reflected. “I need to get put right down to the bottom before I really get a kick up the ass and pull my finger out. I don’t know.

“Last week was one of those weekends you just