Jack Miller continued to be Ducati’s qualifying bridesmaid by securing a third place start for the Valencia GP on Saturday.

Initially claiming the spoils on two separate occasions throughout the final shootout of the year, Miller was denied first by his Lenovo teammate Pecco Bagnaia and then by Pramac’s rising star, Jorge Martin before ultimately ending his own red-sector progress with a high speed crash at turn 11.

“I definitely wasn’t leaving anything on the table, that’s for certain,” Miller confirmed of his late-session fall. “I threw everything at it. I did a good run on the first tyre, felt comfortable and then yeah, that second one, I sort of messed up the first two laps. I didn’t really get through the first sector so I got the last one right but actually seeing the yellows for Pecco - okay, he was back on the bike but I knew that ultimately probably the lap would have been taken away but that was for personal glory more than anything.

“I was going for it. When that big slide happened through nine, it kind of threw me out a little bit wider than I would have liked to have been going into 11 but I was at that point, ‘last qualifying of the year, last lap full time attack of the year’, so I was 100% committed to it and went down with the sinking ship.

”It was a good day in general, we had good pace. I tried the hard - I wanted to do a long run so I did like 18 laps but I was on the hard just because that was the plan but it wasn’t too fantastic. I had a few moments and I was just trying to see if it was going to get any better and it didn’t really. So I think the plan is the medium but I’m feeling good for tomorrow’s race.”

With just one 27-lap race of the year remaining, Miller has both the MotoGP Team Championship - which Ducati Lenovo lead by 28 points - and personal glory on the line. The Australian has secured just four podiums in 2021, two on the top step.

“Team Championship for sure, but it’s all in, isn’t it, we’re in Valencia,” he confirmed. “Got to have a crack. Pecco’s had three wins this year. Marc’s had three wins this year. So I’d like to join that club, but we’ll see what we can do.”

He is, however, confident of the all-round package he now has underneath him and aware of the combined effort it has taken to get there.

“There’s been so many guys on Ducatis the last years” he said of the developmental process with the Desmosedici GP21.

“It’s all put into a group and all of the engineers sit together and they discuss the feedback, so I don’t think it comes down to one certain guy. Everybody’s working on the same thing. You get some guys that say maybe one thing is negative but the other guys maybe found some positives and are overlooking the negative. So it works really well in the group that we have - how well they are talking to each other and communicating with each other on the new parts that are coming in and the development of the new bike.

“We use the Pramac boys a lot, as I know from being there and then also this year as well, with the development of the future bike. So I think the way that the whole group is working together is the big key thing and you can’t put it down to one individual. I think everything has its process - goes first of all to the testing and then to Michele [Pirro] and then through to us, so I think all of them have to be put there for that.”