Stalled out in Argentina 🥵

Hi everyone, 

That was a very disappointing day, I'm not going to lie. Nobody wants to finish 14th, do they? What made it more frustrating was that it was probably the first time in my life I've done a race and not passed one single rider. Started 14th, finished there. Very disappointing, but maybe not so much of a surprise. 

The whole weekend, we were struggling for feeling with the front of the bike and we were chasing our arse a bit. We were in a tricky situation and I tried something in the Sunday warm-up to see if we could find a solution, but I wasn't satisfied with it, it didn't happen. I just didn't have the confidence in the front to go offline and try to make a pass in the race like I usually do, so I just got stuck where I was. 

My worst lap in the race was four-tenths of a second slower than my best lap, so I was consistent – but just not that fast. Even at the end of the race, I caught up with Miguel (Oliveira) reasonably quickly and I had some tyre left to use, but going offline to try to pass him … I had no confidence with the front and I would have risked taking us both down. I was able to ride in a relatively safe way the whole race and I gave the maximum I could, but I missed confidence the whole way through. Turn 1, where I crashed in qualifying … it felt like I was riding on a knife-edge all weekend, and I didn’t have any margin for error. 

This track is all about riding around the problems you come across. The layout is nice but the place hardly ever gets used so it's always really dirty, so when you're pushing there's not a lot of edge grip. You have to keep the bike more upright on the fat part of the tyre to maintain any grip. It's pretty bumpy too, but that's part of the track's character and it's the same for everyone, so we just have to get on with it. 

It was a pretty strange build-up here in Argentina – us riders were all here but some of us didn't even have anything to ride until Saturday. There were some dramas getting all of the equipment from Indonesia to here – it's a long way and they had some difficulties – so the whole weekend got compressed into two days, basically. It was a difficult situation but unfortunately these things can happen, and we just had to get by. Not sure playing golf was how I expected to spend my Friday here though! 

The two-day weekend meant everything felt more, I don't know, cut-throat. We have a lot of engineers of course to work our way through any problems, but the one thing we didn't have that we normally do was time. We just struggled to find our way all weekend, and when you're chasing for solutions with the clock ticking on you, it's hard to make up a lot of ground. 

Argentina feels like one of the newer races still, but we've been coming here a while now – since 2014. It's a really different Grand Prix being so far from any of the big cities and everything, but I've always been happy to race here. It's generally been a good place for me too until this weekend, I had my pole position in 2018 and I'd just missed out on a couple of podiums here, so I like the track and being here – maybe not so much this weekend though.

MotoGP is just so competitive at the moment. Last race in Indonesia I'm fighting with Miguel for the win early on, and here we're battling over 13th … we've had nine different guys on the podium already. Our time will come for that before too long, for me and (teammate) Pecco (Bagnaia), I'm sure. 

The only good thing about this race was that there's another one in seven days' time … we're in Austin next Sunday and that usually goes well for me, so I should have something a lot more positive to talk to you about next week. 

Cheers, Jack


OFFICIAL WEBSHOP

JACK MILLER MERCHANDISE

jackmiller43.com.au is the only official Jack Miller webshop where you get your 100% official merchandise.