It’s not too often in life that you get to finish 12th in a sporting event (any event for that matter) and still get to celebrate a victory. But for one 20 year old, Townsville native by the name of Jack Miller that is exactly what happened last weekend.
Miller must be pinching himself, ‘living the dream’, riding in MotoGP, competing against the best bike riders in the world and now taking his maiden Open Class victory on the CWM, LCR Honda powered machine 3 races into the season. What else can you say except congratulations?
The race result entitled Miller to celebrate alongside the ‘other’ podium finishers, including his third-placed teammate Cal Crutchlow in a ‘big day out’ for the Lucio Cecchinello Racing Team.
Miller has had his fair share of ‘knockers’. People have doubted his ability to succeed in MotoGP, especially since he’s skipped the Moto2 class. Time will eventually tell if these ‘experts’ are right but for now all indications are that it should be a good year for Jack – a learning and maturity defining year not to dis-similar to Casey Stoner who rode with the LCR team in their fledgling 2006 MotoGP season. Casey of course went onto bigger things and achieved the pinnacle of the sport in 2007 on board the Ducati.
For now Miller ends the three race flyaway start to the MotoGP season in 16th place and I guess more importantly second only to Hector Barbera by 2 points on the Avintia Racing Ducati in the Open Class division. That’s not to bad when you consider the likes of former MotoGP World Champion Nicky Haden and 2011 Moto2 World Champion Stefan Bradl are your main rivals.
“I’m learning a lot riding with those guys,” Miller said after the race.
I’m sure he is but one would expect that these two former World Champions are not to happy with this ‘Jackass’ from Oz and how things have unfolded for them at the start of the season. We can expect both of them to come out fighting (for perhaps MotoGP survival) when hostilities resume in Europe in two weeks time.
As for the rookie battle between Miller and Laverty that’s now 2 to 1 in favour of Jack.
This from Jack Miller after the race:
“It was a great day today, we are always making steps forward and I am so happy to see things progress like this. Step by step we are getting closer to the front. Today it was so hot out on track and the tyre was really destroyed by the end of the race, we were sliding about so much. I can’t thank the CWM LCR Honda Team enough for giving me the bike I needed. We needed to do a lot of work in the warm up to get it where we needed it for the race, so I’m absolutely delighted.”
Next stop, Jerez for the Gran Premio bwin de Espana on May 3rd.
Photograph: ©2015 by Darren Marlowe | Octane Photography – All Rights Reserved