The leader of the first day of the Japanese Grand Prix, Jack Miller, told how the 75-minute FP1 in Motegi went and why it was so great.
Changeable weather in Motegi could not significantly help MotoGP teams and drivers to improve the condition of the track. When the free practices of Moto3 and Moto2 started, there was little support. Even when the long 75-minute FP1 in the Royal Class began, the pilots could not immediately reach a normal pace – their motorcycles slid. But due to the fact that the session was almost 99% dry, the rubber rolled up during the day was enough to bring the pace of the leaders to 1:44.
“We didn’t start as fast as we had planned, and we hope that we will have at least one completely dry session before the race. On a new set of tires at the last moment, I managed to accelerate and show a very good result. The track is generally in good condition and I liked how the bike worked today. But I think the lap time should be significantly better. Tomorrow we will improve it if it doesn’t rain,” Miller said.
“I think today was a very good day. And what I liked the most was the extended session: we used all the time, from flag to flag, to catch the rhythm, find the setup and make a “shot”. We even managed to conduct comparative testing of a couple of different sets of rubber and made some conclusions. Today, for the first time, we fully realized what an improvement we got from installing new tail fins, and that’s great!”
Miller’s partner in Ducati Lenovo Team Pecco Bagnaia showed the second result of the day, but the difference between the pilots of the factory team is minimal – 0.028 seconds. The third was the leader of the MotoGP championship from Yamaha Fabio Quartararo, who was only 0.04 seconds behind Ducati.