Jack Miller is in a confident mood heading into the MotoGP Sprint race at the Sachsenring in Germany after qualifying in third.
The Australian rider sealed a front-row start following a chaotic final qualifying session, which took place on a damp but drying track.
A yellow flag in the final moments after Johann Zarco crashed out resulted in a spate of cancelled laps, but Miller managed to set a fast time before the incident.
He was only 0.083s down on pole man Francesco Bagnaia (Lenovo Ducati) and now the Red Bull KTM man is gunning for the podium in the Sprint encounter at round seven of the championship.
“The front row is crucial around here, it’s super tight, super technical and hard to pass – there’s not many passing points – so it’ll be nice to hopefully be able to get away with a good start,” said Miller.
“I’m feeling really good [for the Sprint race] and it’s kind of an unknown situation for the tyres, because we haven’t really used anything on the front end apart from the soft, so we’re going a little bit into the unknown.
“But anyway I feel quite confident heading towards the Sprint race and then we’ll find out what we need for tomorrow’s main race.”
Miller, traditionally strong in the type of conditions prevalent in Saturday’s qualifying session, said he was able to make the factory KTM work on the greasy track for a prime spot on the front row.
“It wasn’t too bad to be honest, most of the track was pretty dry. We had a couple of river crossings to contend with and then the last corner was pretty drenched,” said the 28-year-old.
“Here in Sachsenring, you always get those wet points like that where the water is sort of running down the hill, but we were able to make it work.
“Yellow flag chaos was there at the end but we knew it was going to be like that, so the plan was to go out and put in as many laps as we could at the end there and thankfully it was enough to put us on the front row.”
Miller was sixth in the Sprint race at Mugello in Italy at the previous round and seventh in the main Sunday race. He is seventh in the standings, 30 points behind team-mate Brad Binder in fourth.
The Sprint starts at 1500 local time/2300 AEDT.
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