Jack Miller has described his first year in MotoGP’s premier class as a campaign of ‘ups and downs’ as he strives to establish himself on the world stage.

The Australian rider made the giant leap from Moto3 to MotoGP this year with the LCR Honda squad after signing a lucrative deal with the Japanese manufacturer.

Adapting to the higher power open class bike provided one of several challenges for the Queenslander who showed glimpses of potential but struggled for consistency.

Miller scored 17 points on his way to 19th spot in the championship and fourth in the Open Class, recording a best race finish of 11th at Catalunya in June.

Despite coming up short in his goal of a top 10 race finish, the Townsville rider is happy with the progress made in 2015.

Miller aims to take the lessons learned into his second campaign with the highly regarded Marc VDS Honda outfit next year.

“First of all I’d like to thank the LCR Honda team for taking this risk and putting me in this year. It’s been an awesome year, I’ve enjoyed it a lot,” said Miller.

“We’ve had some ups and downs and didn’t quite achieve the goal of a top 10 finish that we wanted, but we showed some really strong performances during the season and I’m looking forward to coming back to the MotoGP class next year.

“I think we improved a lot during the course of the year especially compared to when we tested here (in Valencia) at the start of the year, we’ve improved by nearly two seconds and that’s not easy to do.

“I think Phillip Island would have to be our best race of the season and now I’m looking forward to improving again next year.”

Preparations for the 2016 season will begin later today with the start of a two day test at Valencia.