Jack Miller Says Yamaha Is Almost Unrideable at Mandalika: “The Engine’s Behavior Is Inconsistent”

For the second Grand Prix in a row, Jack Miller found himself on a Yamaha that was almost impossible to ride. After Motegi, the Pramac rider also had a Sunday to forget at the Indonesian MotoGP weekend, ending in a crash on lap five while running seventeenth.

This time, however, the Australian is not blaming the tyres. Miller suspects the problem at Mandalika may be linked to the M1's engine.

In Japan, Miller had blamed the major front-end problems in traffic on the tyres’ starting pressures, which he described as "ridiculously safe". The same scenario played out in Indonesia, but the rider’s diagnosis is different, pointing to electronic management and the engine.

"It was quite similar to Japan. This morning I had a reasonably good feeling, but as soon as we went out for the Sprint, the bike became almost impossible to ride", Miller told Crash.net. "Something isn’t working as it should, whether it’s related to the fuel mapping or something else. The engine’s behaviour is inconsistent, and we need to work harder to understand why".

The team’s Sunday was also difficult on the other side of the garage. Toprak Razgatlioglu retired, hampered by the dislocated right shoulder he sustained in a crash on Saturday morning during FP2. We covered his situation in Toprak Razgatlioglu’s shoulder nightmare: now he fears surgery. As a result, Pramac Yamaha has failed to score points for the fourth consecutive Grand Prix weekend.

Team director Gino Borsoi made no secret of his disappointment: "Expectations were high, especially given how Friday started, and we were hoping to fight for points. Toprak’s injury certainly made things more difficult, but Jack’s crash today was also a setback we could have done without."

The comparison with the factory team offers little comfort: Fabio Quartararo and Alex Rins both scored points, finishing ninth and fifteenth respectively.

Borsoi believes the potential is there, but something is being lost along the way: "We know we’re struggling at the moment, but we’ve shown that we can fight for points, so we need to understand why we can’t turn that potential into results".

The team boss’s closing remarks sound like a call to the whole team ahead of the next races: "We need to change something, be more precise in our work and make sure we do everything possible to give both riders the opportunity to achieve the results we know are within our reach".

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