Pramac Ducati's Jack Miller has revealed he doesn't use sixth gear on his MotoGP Desmosedici GP20 at Jerez and joked that it's like riding around the car park on it.
But the young Australian, who took fourth place in last weekend's season opener at the same venue, is buoyed by the Ducati's performance at a track it doesn't have a great record with and believes it's good training for tracks with long straights like Brno, Spielberg and Catalunya.
"We don't even use sixth gear here, so it's like riding in a parking lot for our bike," said Miller, speaking at the track.
"But we've got it working pretty well around here and it's great training for the other tracks. If we are going half-decent here, it means you've got the thing turning a little bit, so it'll be interesting to see what we can do at the other tracks.
"I'm definitely looking forward to tracks like Brno, somewhere sort of old school, where you can let the thing stretch its legs."
Miller finished seventh on the combined timesheets today but only half a second off the pace but said he wasn't venturing over the limit.
I wasn't out there trying to break lap records. Especially in the faster corners, I was not taking too many risks. For sure pushing, but keeping a little bit in the tank for FP3 tomorrow, because I know that it's going to be very important and saving it for then and qualifying.
"Already this afternoon the track temperature was a bit hotter than it has been, and the forecast is for it to be even hotter over the weekend."
Miller isn't discounting any of the tyre options yet and carried out work on all three rears over the course of today.
"We’re just trying to understand what tyres to run, because I feel a lot of guys are sort of stuck in their way of focusing only on the tyre the race winner and most of the grid ran last week, which I think was good and everything, but my feeling is that we can focus on both tyres that we have.
"I don't think we can discount the medium, because the track is always different, day in day out, and what worked last week may not work this week. So we're keeping our options open, you could say."
