Jack Miller heads into the Portuguese GP refreshed and assured after the Ducati Lenovo rider dispatched a dominant performance at COTA.

Having led for the majority of the Texan race, Miller met the flag in third, behind Suzuki’s Alex Rins and MotoGP Championship leader Enea Bastianini. While the 27-year-old sits seventh in the standings, 30 points adrift of the Gresini man, the 2022 season remains tight as the paddock returns to more familiar territory with the first back-to-back on European soil.

“It’s nice to come into the European season with the ball rolling a little bit,” Miller said on Thursday. “Bumpy start as it generally is for me into the championship but got the ball rolling now, and we got some good tracks coming up.

“Starting to really gel with my bike, understanding it more and more every weekend - what we need to do, where we need to work, that kind of thing but all in all just happy going through the motions.”

With the first podium of the year now under his belt, the Australian is looking forward to building on the momentum this time out.

“Try and do the same thing we did in Austin which was just put together a solid weekend,” he said of his Portimao plans. “I think that gives you the confidence, it brings you the confidence for Sunday's race. We ran out of steam a little bit there but it was definitely a building block on what we need to do for the races coming forward.”

Having stood on the podium at two of the past three Algarve outings, Miller seems to have an affinity with the rollercoaster.

“I think the fact that it's so different to any other track we got on the calendar that makes it nice,” he admitted. "You've got to negotiate the elevation, you've got corners off camber, on camber. It throws a bit of everything at you so it's definitely a refreshing track to ride.

“A lot of the tracks nowadays are built very similar so it's kind of nice to go to something that's completely left field. We've had a pretty good record around here.

"Hopefully we can find the speed that we had last year, at the end of the year. So we'll try to find that and just build a solid weekend, that's the main plan. The championship sort of really starts kicking off here, starts heating up now, so hopefully we'll be in the forefront.”

With teammate Pecco Bagnaia still unsure of his 22-spec Desmosedici, Miller is a little more laid back in his approach to this season’s Ducati.

"At the end of the day my bike's working well, there's no chance in changing back so I don't even know what the point in assessing it is,” he confirmed. “We're doing the best we can with what we’ve got. We've got a fantastic package. All I'm here to do is try and ride the bike to the best of my abilities and extract the most I can out of it. I'm not here to confirm or deny if one bike's better than the other. I'm here to race it and that's it.

“Has been probably my weakest point to be consistent, in my career,” the Australian continued. “I feel I'm getting better and better every year and it's simply from the work that we do in the free practice leading into the race. Just working over the weekend. The longer runs, try to understand the lap time and stay as close to the time as possible. Even with mistakes or whatever, try not to to get annoyed because you think 'Okay, in FP3, it doesn't count, you can cancel a lap and go again.’ Just start to work like this. Like every session is a race a little bit, work like you cannot make mistakes and I found, for me personally, that it has helped a lot in my growth as a rider and being able to be more consistent.”