Once he was finished pulling pints for his team, Jack Miller found a bottle of tequila and downed it at a rapid rate. Then he fished the mescal worm out of the bottom of the bottle and devoured that. It was mayhem, and it was completely justified.
The scene: the Marc VDS Honda hospitality unit at the Dutch TT of 2016, where Miller had just achieved the unthinkable by winning in MotoGP for the first time. This, though, was no ordinary maiden success.
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Miller triumphed from 18th on the grid; no rider had won from further back than 14th since reliable qualifying records were first kept 36 years previously. He was victorious after never having finished better than 10th in 24 previous MotoGP races since making the audacious switch from Moto3 – bypassing Moto2 altogether – the year prior. And he won with odds of 1000-1 with the bookies. Miller’s only regret that day would have been not laying down some of his then-modest salary on himself, given what he achieved.
Fast-forward eight years, and it goes without saying that the 2024 season has been tough for the 29-year-old Australian, who sits in a lowly 16th place in the world championship after seven rounds. He’s also without a job for 2025, after being supplanted at KTM by Spanish rookie sensation Pedro Acosta, and overlooked for KTM’s sister Tech3 team for Enea Bastianini and Maverick Vinales for next season.
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But no matter whether his top-flight career extends into an 11th season or he’s facing his MotoGP mortality, the memories of Assen 2016 will never fade.
Ahead of MotoGP’s return to one of its oldest, iconic circuits this weekend for the Dutch TT, we recap one of the wettest, wildest and weirdest MotoGP races in history – and how a 21-year-old from Townsville defied the odds, his opponents and his doubters to etch his name into the sport’s history books.
SETTING THE SCENE
Miller’s 2015 rookie season was as bruising as it was chastening. Jumping to the premier class after a runner-up result in Moto3 in 2014, the Aussie was green, wild and more than a little over his head. Taking out LCR Honda teammate Cal Crutchlow – at Crutchlow’s home Grand Prix at Silverstone – was an all-time gaffe that could have had greater consequences if Crutchlow wasn’t a mate who was looking out for Miller’s welfare …
Miller moved to fellow satellite team Marc VDS for the following season, where results were slow to come by. A massive crash in practice in Texas saw him miss the Americas GP with a foot injury, but he’d recovered sufficiently to take a top-10 result – his first – in Catalunya two weeks before MotoGP set up in the Netherlands.
Miller’s second taste of a big bike at Assen didn’t start well. He couldn’t do better than 16th in Friday’s two practice sessions, then qualified just 18th in a 21-bike field after falling off at Turn 10.
Given his previous two visits to the revered Dutch circuit had ended in crashes, expectations were modest at best, and the bookmakers barely gave him a passing thought.
And then? It rained …
SURVIVAL OF THE WETTEST
Miller, like so many Australians who graduate to road racing after cutting their teeth in dirt rack and are accustomed to constantly-changing levels of grip, didn’t mind a bit of wet-weather riding … which is what the field got as the rain teemed down soon after the 2pm local start.
He gained six places on lap one and stealthily moved forwards to eighth, but by lap 15 of the scheduled 26-lap distance, visibility was close to zero and bikes were aquaplaning off track in a straight line with the riders feathering the throttle.
The race was halted, and Miller figured that was that – and would have been happy to dry off and head for home.
“I would have liked to have been further up but it was absolutely the right call to stop it,” he later recounted to this author for a rider diary for sponsor Red Bull.
“The visibility was really bad and the standing water was crazy in some parts, and I wouldn’t have been unhappy if the race had been red-flagged even earlier. When it stopped and there was a chance we wouldn’t get going again, I was really happy with eighth – 10th in the last race was the best I’d done in MotoGP before, and to improve on that considering how far back I’d started after qualifying didn’t go well, I was pretty content. I didn’t really want a restart.”
But when the rain cleared, race organisers deemed action was safe enough to resume over 12 laps, with all riders starting in the positions they finished the red-flagged race in. For riders with championship aspirations and plenty to lose, it was a potential nightmare. For Miller, who nobody expected anything of, it was an opportunity.
SEIZING THE DAY
Miller’s intent – and his reputation for supernatural feel in the wet and finding grip where others floundered – clicked into overdrive as the race restarted, immediately vaulting from eighth to fourth on the first lap. Then, as he pushed on and became bolder, the seas parted.
First, Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso fell in the spray, and Miller was in a podium place for the first time. Next, Valentino Rossi – on track to take over at the top of the standings and in the lead on his Yamaha, made a rare blunder and crashed. Miller now only had Honda’s Marc Marquez, the two-time defending champion, ahead of him – and with Rossi’s teammate Jorge Lorenzo tiptoeing around towards the back, Miller felt Marquez had too much to lose in a fight for the lead.
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“When ‘Dovi’ (Andrea Dovizioso) went down, I thought ‘wow, third would be alright’, and then Vale (Valentino Rossi) went down … I thought ‘hang on, I can actually win this’,” Miller said.
“I got the sense Marc had buttoned off a bit once Valentino went down and that’s completely understandable. He’s not worried about me. I’m not winning the championship this year and had pretty much nothing to lose, so I figured he wouldn’t fight too hard if I tried to make a pass.”
Miller dive-bombed Marquez into the final chicane – the Spaniard saw him coming and couldn’t get out of the way fast enough – and took the lead of a MotoGP race for the first time with five laps left.
It was almost too much time to think, but the treacherous track kept him focused.
“Those last five laps that seemed to take about five years,” he said.
“I got into a nice groove and to be honest, there weren’t too many moments – I just tried to be as smooth as possible, not try to go for too much and keep my head, something I’m probably not all that known for. I actually felt quite calm.”
Miller crossed the line 1.991secs ahead of Marquez, and all that tension – plus the sting of criticism he’d copped from his Moto3 to MotoGP move – exploded by way of celebration. By the time he’d returned to the pits, he had no voice left. A tearful post-race interview in parc ferme – “we can ride a bike, I’m not an idiot … I can’t talk” – preceded a trip to the top step of the podium, where the celebratory champagne was poured into his sweaty race boot and promptly skolled, Miller inspiring Daniel Ricciardo’s first signature shoey when the Australian F1 driver finished second in Germany a month later.
By the time he got to the post-race press conference – soaked, emotional, buzzing from the champagne – Miller was in fine form.
“I could see that Marc didn’t really want to take any risks, and who could blame him?,” Miller said, turning to Marquez and saying “you have this famous saying, ‘glory or hospital’,” as Marquez grinned.
“I mean, if I went past myself I’d be like, ‘Oh, that dickhead’s going to crash in two minutes’,” Miller continued, the assembled media giggling.
“It gives Honda something back for taking such a big gamble on me. The risks those guys have taken to bring me straight to MotoGP from Moto3, and the amount of criticism they got and the amount of criticism I’ve got … So a big thank you to those guys.
“And then [thanks] also to my family as well for moving to Europe six years ago and taking that sort of gamble. It’s actually four o’clock in the morning [in Australia], so I assume my parents have gone to bed … but knowing them, they probably haven’t. I’m sure they’re 40 beers deep and having a great time.”
The celebrations turned to tequila – and the aforementioned worm – soon afterwards, briefly pausing when Miller sheepishly remembered how he’d arrived at Assen in the first place.
“I drove my new van that I bought a few weeks ago from Andorra to Assen, so maybe I’ll need to find someone to drive it back,” he laughed.
“Not a problem I expected to be having, to be honest. But I’ll take it.”
From there, Miller’s career story is one well-told. A third year at Honda preceded a five-year run with Ducati, where he won three more Grands Prix and finished inside the top five in the standings twice. A two-year return to KTM – who he raced with in his Moto3 days – was a feel-good full-circle moment in 2023, but this season has been mostly bad, and occasionally worse.
Miller’s whereabouts after this year remain unclear heading to Assen this week in a rider market silly season that has hurtled along at breakneck speed since the most recent round in Italy. He’s been linked with a return to Ducati in place of Marquez at the Gresini Racing team, suggested as a name in the frame should Pramac Racing – as expected – dump Ducati machinery to run Yamahas in 2025, or tabbed as leaving MotoGP altogether for World Superbikes.
While that’s all to play out, arriving at Assen this week for Miller will elicit that same grin and warm feeling he’s experienced ever since his return for the first time as a race-winner in 2017.
“Every time I drive into Assen – probably every time I ever come here in the future too – I’ll be thinking of 2016,” he said ahead of the 2023 race.
“I mean, it’s logical … the memories always flood back. Different times back then, for sure. It’s actually been a bit of an up and down venue for me. But 2016 … that was awesome.”