20 Races a Year Are Not Enough for Jack Miller

While reigning MotoGP World Champion Francesco Bagnaia was busy getting married last weekend, in the middle of MotoGP’s summer break, Jack MIller headed home to Australia.

The Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider headed to Toowoomba, Queensland, to take part in round six of the MX1 class of the Australian Pro MX series, the premier motocross championship in Australia.

Find all the latest motorcycle news on Visordown.

Miller, being a MotoGP rider and the only Australian in MotoGP a the moment, attracted a fair bit of additional attention to the race, although it must be said that Aus Pro MX is one of the most prominent motocross championships in the world — arguably only AMA Pro Motocross and the MXGP World Championship have a greater international reach.

Part of the intrigue around Miller’s attendance was the absence of expectation. Although Miller is a keen motocrosser, it would have been unfair to have almost any expectations at all of the #43 when going up against the best dirt bike racers in Australia. Would he be way out the back? Fighting for points? Somewhere in the middle?

In the end, the latter would be closest as Miller went 23-24 on the day in fields of 29 riders and 26 riders in the first and second motos, respectively.

It’s a decent showing from Miller, who finished two laps down in both races to Kyle Webster and Jed Beaton, respectively. Former MXGP rider, Beaton, took the overall with a 2-1 thanks to his second moto result being better than Webster (who a few weeks ago was racing the AMA National at RedBud with top 10 speed) who went 1-2.

The Toowoomba appearance was not Miller’s first at an Australian national series event in recent years, having raced twice at The Bend in the Australian Superbike Championship when he rode for Ducati. The absence of big sportsbikes from KTM’s current production roster means that motocross is pretty much all that’s available to Miller, especially in July. The Finke Desert Race would have been an option in MotoGP’s ‘spring break’ (between the Italian Grand Prix and Dutch TT, after the initial postponement of the now-cancelled Kazakhstan Grand Prix), but the chances of being injured on that are probably even higher than in a regular motocross race.

With Miller out of KTM next year, a move to HRC was once rumoured, but now Miller’s best bet of remaining in MotoGP is rumoured to be the new Pramac Yamaha team, such is the Australian’s relationship with the Italian team for which he raced between 2018–2020. A Yamaha deal would, of course, present the opportunity to race an off-season ASBK race again, and, theoretically, not rule out the possibility of returning to Australian Pro MX on the same motorcycle Beaton rode to victory in Toowoomba last weekend.