MotoGP Germany: Penalty to podium proves Miller’s return to confidence

Ducati Lenovo’s Jack Miller proved he has finally clicked with the GP22 by standing on the Sachsenring podium on Sunday.

Despite announcing he was leaving Bologna for Mattighofen at the end of the season, Miller’s determination to return to the MotoGP rostrum in red was far from dimmed as he claimed third position at the German GP, in one of the toughest races of his career, for his third podium of 2022.

“It was long, long old race that!” Miller stated from the Saxony paddock. “30 laps around here is always pretty gruelling anyway and then when you have a track temp of 55 degrees and the heat off these bikes coming through the field was so hot!”

The raging temperatures for the longest race - in terms of laps - of the season wasn’t the only stumbling block last weekend. As the 27-year-old was hit with a long lap penalty after a crash under yellow flags in FP4. Despite pleading his case with the FIM Stewards, Miller took the penalty on the chin before putting the Desmosedici back on the podium.

“I went up there completely honest with them, like I’m with you guys,” he said to the questioning media. “I went up and I said ‘hey, I literally saw the yellow flag. I wasn’t pushing, I had a bit of vibration in the front’. Literally I said to myself in the helmet, I said ‘don’t crash’ and I crashed. I took the data printout and showed them ‘okay, this is the vibration, this is what happened’ but I said ‘I understand that you guys have got a job to do’. I mean, that is what it is, if you crash under a yellow, we all know the consequences. Do I feel hard done by? No, I mean, there was nobody in danger but there was a yellow flag and I was in the wrong so it is what it is. “With the long lap penalty I knew I had to get a good start