MotoGP Mandalika Test: ‘I was really enjoying myself’ - Miller

Ducat Lenovo’s Jack Miller was leading the way as the final hour of testing at Mandalika got underway on Friday before ending the action sixth overall.

The Australian seemed to be throughly enjoying MotoGP’s newest venue despite the tricky conditions Indonesia’s tropical weather and recently completed track surface threw up.

“The grip level was getting better and better lap by lap,” Miller explained having finished work on Friday. “You can quite clearly see the track was just getting this nice clean line but outside of it. I was just saying to Alex [Rins] between 11 and 12 when it sort of changes over, I was sort of trying to prepare one lap a little bit wider entry and just try to sweep through, and as I did it just was on the dirty stuff and it went away. Pretty much that sums up most of the day but I think it was good.

“I’m glad everybody got out and got amongst it because that’s what the track needed. It wasn’t gonna get any better. It’s one of those things, if it was a race weekend, that’s it, that’s how it is and that’s how it is, for example, when we come to somewhere like Argentina that doesn’t get used very much throughout the year. It will be the same here I think, but as we saw lap by lap the track was getting better and better. It was a lot of fun there at the end. I was really enjoying myself all day.”

“It’s very wide, you almost get lost at some points but it’s got a bit of everything,” he continued on the brand-new 4.3kms layout. “There’s some blind crests and stuff like that. That triple right, five/six/seven and then the really fast change of direction over eight/nine is fantastic.

“It uses every ounce of your strength to try and muscle the thing over and then back over again while trying to get on the