Jack Miller had to laugh.
It was the end of Friday practice at last weekend’s British Grand Prix, where the Pramac Yamaha man had been the fastest of the four Yamaha riders and ninth-fastest overall, booking a direct entry into Q2 on Saturday, the 15-minute top-12 shootout for pole position.
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In 11 years of coming to Silverstone for the premier class, Miller had never lapped the 5.9-kilometre track faster, his best time of 1min 57.332secs seeing him cruise through in ninth, and with one-quarter of a second up his sleeve.
In a mostly miserable season, it was cause for a fleeting moment of celebration. But one with a shake of the head after his eyes locked on the sizeable deficit to Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi at the top of the timesheets.
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“When I came in and saw a [1min] 56.2 [from Bezzecchi], I thought ‘what the f**k is going on?’,” he grinned, disbelievingly.
“It just shows the level of the bikes and the riders. The conditions were not fantastic out there, so even for me to do a [1min] 57.3 … I’m beyond stoked with that.”
It’s not an uncommon feeling for Miller this year, either. The Queenslander is realistic to know that, in a season where he has just 23 points in 12 rounds – after his worst season since 2016 last year (79 points in 22 rounds) – 2026 will be his final go-round on the world championship scene, Pramac almost certainly bringing up its Moto2 rider Izan Guevara in the out-of-contract Miller’s place for 2027 in what is something of an open secret in the paddock.
In a 210-race MotoGP career where he’s ridden for Honda, Ducati and KTM before his two-year run with Yamaha, the 31-year-old will end this season in the top six for all-time premier-class races started, and close the loop on an unlikely journey from Townsville to more than a decade in the sport’s top flight.
He’ll also end knowing that, across comparable sessions on comparable tracks this season, he’s faster than he’s ever been. It’s a familiar refrain from every Miller press debrief when he’s asked about his performances on what has, quite clearly, been MotoGP’s worst bike.
Comparing Miller’s 2026 results to his best MotoGP season of 2021 – when he won two Grands Prix and finished a career-best fourth in the standings for Ducati – helps to both prove his point, and illustrate how the game has dramatically moved on in five short years.
Bezzecchi Smashes British Lap Record | 01:00
FASTER, BUT FURTHER FROM THE FRONT
“I feel like I’m riding the best that I ever have,” Miller said, not for the first time, when MotoGP unpacked after its summer break at Silverstone last Thursday before the 12th round of the season.
One day later, that career-best lap of the windswept former World War II airfield proved his point.
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It’s one data point of comparison to a season that the record books say was his best, the 2021 campaign that was held in front of sparse crowds as global covid restrictions slowly lifted.
Then, Miller was a factory Ducati rider alongside Francesco Bagnaia, who pushed Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo all the way to the title before ultimately falling short. The same Quartararo for the same Yamaha who finished 2.5 seconds ahead of Miller last Sunday at Silverstone – in 12th – before being penalised 16 seconds for a tyre pressure infringement.
In the 12 rounds held in 2026 to date, eight of them – Americas (COTA), Spain (Jerez), France (Le Mans), Italy (Mugello), Catalunya (Barcelona), Netherlands (Assen), Germany (Sachsenring) and Great Britain (Silverstone) were on the schedule five years ago, when Miller was at his statistical peak, winning back-to-back races at Jerez and Le Mans.
Yes, MotoGP bikes even visually are worlds apart in 2026 from ’21, with the aerodynamic revolution that has swept the sport in the 2020s starkly evident even from a cursory glance. Aero plus ride-height devices plus better tyres adds up to pure performance. But the relevant data is instructive.
At Silverstone last week, Miller – who finished fourth in the 2021 British GP – completed the 20 laps nine seconds faster than five years ago, yet was classified 12th. While he wasn’t able to reprise that blistering 1:57.332 Friday practice time in qualifying (1:57.494, 11th), he was 1.9secs faster (but four places further back on the grid) than 2021. His fastest race lap (1:59.921) was only the 14th-fastest of the 23 starters, but still half a second quicker than his best Silverstone lap in 2021, which was second overall.
It’s a familiar pattern, with occasional outliers.
In the Grand Prix of the Americas in round three, Miller – who finished 16th and out of the points after finishing seventh for Ducati in 2021 – qualified 1.9secs faster than he had five years previously, set a fastest race lap that was 1.2secs quicker, and finished the race 40 seconds faster.
The races in Spain (where it poured with rain in qualifying and he crashed) and France (where the 2021 race, which he won, was held in fluctuating wet and dry conditions) produce inconclusive data comparisons, but Miller was faster in qualifying in Italy, Catalunya, Germany and the Netherlands despite being no better than 11th on the grid at those four rounds.
Yamaha’s dwindling race pace compared to its rivals – Yamaha sits a distant last in the constructors’ championship with 73 points, 46 behind Honda, and its two teams are 10th and 11th in the 11-strong teams’ championship – means its no surprise to learn that Miller’s race times over the same number of laps as the same tracks as 2021 are slower in every comparable instance besides COTA and Silverstone, a trend that’s in keeping with the performances of Quartararo, the Frenchman’s factory Yamaha teammate Alex Rins, and Miller’s rookie teammate at Pramac, Toprak Razgatlioglu.
It’s been a chastening season for Yamaha, which brought a brand-new V4 engine project for the final year of the 1000cc era before MotoGP moves to 850cc machinery next year, but has slipped even further behind its rivals than last year.
There’s no disputing the quality of Yamaha’s rider corps – Quartararo is the 2021 world champion, Rins has won six Grands Prix, and Razgatlioglu came to MotoGP as a 29-year-old three-time World Superbikes champion. Miller, a four-time Grand Prix winner, hasn’t finished better than fifth (Americas, 2025) in a race or qualified higher than third (Australia, 2025) since he came across from KTM.
Miller (19th), Rins (20th) and Razgatlioglu (21st) occupy three of the bottom four spots on the championship table among the full-time riders, with only KTM’s Maverick Vinales (22nd, having missed four rounds with injury) keeping a Yamaha out of the basement.
Rins, like Miller, looks set for a World Superbikes switch for 2027, while Quartararo – who has spent his entire eight-year MotoGP career with Yamaha – is off to Honda for the next two years.
Yamaha is clearly at a crossroads, and is looking for new signings Jorge Martin and Ai Ogura to lead them out of the darkness under a major regulation change that has the potential, if not the guarantee, of resetting the established order. But, as Silverstone showed, Miller has no plans to roll out of the throttle and cruise to the finish line.
‘I GAVE IT MY ALL … IT IS WHAT IT IS’
Miller clearly overachieved over one lap by qualifying 11th at Silverstone – Quartararo, a renowned one-lap genius, was 13th, while Rins (17th) and Razgatlioglu (22nd) were nowhere – which meant his races were always going to be an exercise in damage limitation.
In Saturday’s sprint, the Australian – along with former KTM teammate Brad Binder and Ducati stand-in rider and World Superbikes regular Iker Lecuona – elected to go against the grain by using Michelin’s medium-compound tyre for the 10-lap race, knowing that it would be slower in the early laps against his soft-shod rivals, but with an eye to assessing tyre durability for Sunday’s 20-lap Grand Prix.
Miller immediately fell to 16th on lap one, but the more durable tyre came to him late as his rivals ran out of grip, and he advanced to 13th by the chequered flag.
“The medium was the right decision,” he said.
“I did 11-12 laps on the softs through the weekend [in practice] two times, and all of them have looked like s**t, felt like s**t. The last two laps [during practice], I couldn’t lean anymore so I didn’t feel confident at all.
“I was confident in my decision and I knew it was going to be difficult at the beginning, but at the end we were able to come back through. No points, but decent. [At the end of the race] the medium will be s**t as well, in a different way.
“Silverstone is always a tough one on the tyres, so you have to nurse it, be as polite as you possibly can.”
Fast-forward to Sunday, and Miller – as has been the case more often that not this year – found himself in a back-of-the-pack battle with his Yamaha stablemates, with – this time – Rins not part of it after the Spaniard crashed on the opening lap.
An unusually hot Silverstone – the track temperature nudged 44 degrees at race start – and its layout of punishing, long corners soon shredded tyres, and Rins was one of seven riders to crash out in just the opening nine laps, world champions (Joan Mir, Francesco Bagnaia) and 2026 title protagonists (Ai Ogura) among them.
Quartararo and Miller ran line-astern for the majority of the 20 laps, race-winner Raul Fernandez and his fellow Aprilia riders in a class of their own, locking out the podium for a second successive day.
Miller gained a place to 12th when Quartararo was penalised, but was 29secs behind the victor … and yet nine seconds faster than he’d been at the same track in his strongest MotoGP campaign on a Ducati.
“I gave it my all today, and unfortunately my all today was 13th position, so it is what it is,” he said, learning later that he’d been promoted to 12th.
“Fabio and I were riding together for the whole race yet again, and that’s the level we’re at, unfortunately. We’re trying to fight the other guys, you do so for a certain amount of time, but at a certain point you know the areas where you have to push extra, whether it be braking, mid-corner or exit, they start to have a knock-on effect towards the back half of the race.
“The tyre drop was there, and we were all riding very cautious. Even then, it wasn’t so much fun for the last seven or eight laps.”
Cautious – as much as you can ride a MotoGP bike cautiously – sure. Faster, certainly. Realistic, too.
That Friday feeling of momentary satisfaction upon realising he’d lapped a track he’d been riding MotoGP machinery on since 2015 faster than ever – and knowing that the summit seemed further away than ever – perhaps explained his pragmatic mood when downloading his Silverstone weekend, knowing that it will almost certainly be his last time in that world championship paddock.
“Unfortunately if you’re not on the [right] package, the level of the guys is so incredible,” Miller mused, not mentioning Aprilia and Ducati by name, but not needing to either.
“I’ve had that package in the past, and I wasn’t able to do what needed to be done to keep it. But I’m not naïve, and I know what’s coming.
“I’m not bitter about anything, I’ve had a good run. I feel like I’m an asset to wherever I go and whatever championship I’m in.
“I don’t want to be somewhere where I’m not wanted, so I’ll go and do something where people want me.”
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