Jack Miller has a big decision to make in a critical phase of his MotoGP career, according to KTM team manager Francesco Guidotti.
Miller, 29 years old, is in the final year of his two-year deal racing for the factory KTM in a season 18 other riders are also coming out of contract.
The Aussie four-time winner was brought to KTM to turbocharge the team’s development from midfielder to contender, and the brand improved from fourth to second in the manufacturers championship last year.
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But the induction of young superstar Pedro Acosta to the satellite Gas Gas this season team has ramped up speculation that Miller could be shuffled aside, with a protracted form slump from the middle of last year counting against him.
Speaking to the MotoGP website, team manager Guidotti said Miller needed to find a new level of performance to keep his seat.
“He’s in a phase of life where he has to make a big decision,” he said. “It’s in his own hands.
“He’s almost 30. For a rider he’s still pretty young if he wants to continue to ride on a certain level.
“But as he said also, the youngsters are coming very quickly, so he needs to behave this year maybe as he’s never done before.”
Guidotti said it would be up to Miller to adopt the right mindset to overcome another season of contract speculation.
“I don’t know if he really likes it or not, because sometimes it’s difficult to understand what he has in his mind,” he said.
“When you reach a level, then it’s always a matter of mental approach.
“He has to be really brave and really constant and really smart to use the correct mental approach this season.
“All the speculation about the riders market has to be forgotten.”
Miller is no stranger contract rumours, having existed on rolling single-year deals throughout his time with Ducati from 2018 until he committed to KTM for two seasons from 2023.
Though he’s never enjoyed the speculation that comes with contract seasons, the Townsville native has got a kick from continuing to thrive in the premier class despite doubters regularly predicting his demise.
“Dealing with the fuss is all a part of it,” he said at KTM’s 2024 season launch. “I’ve been dealing with it my whole career pretty much.
“When it comes down to, ‘Can he still do it?’, the amount of times people have said that I can’t and then I’ve been able to prove them wrong — [it] is more often than not.
“Being able to prove a lot of people wrong already in the first year of being on this bike where a lot of people said that we’d be going here or going there — going home, basically — after one year on the bike, I think we’ve turned a lot of people in that favour.”
Miller said he also derived satisfaction from making his KTM seat an object of desire among rival riders in the paddock for having played a major role in improving the bike’s performance.
“[There were] also a lot of people were talking a lot about the whole project and about the bike itself,” he said.
“It wasn’t probably one of the most sought-after bikes last year. Coming into 2024 I think we’ve definitely changed public opinion on that one, and I definitely take a big sense of pride in being able to do that, showing that you can ride this bike and different riding styles do work on this bike.
“Brad [Binder], myself and Augusto [Fernández] last year were able to prove that with three very different riding styles and all [being] able to do a decent job.”
Guidotti also praised Miller for driving the team forwards.
“He is the best one in team effort,” he said. “He’s the master. He’s always been perfect with the team and with his teammate.”
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But despite his development form, Miller’s results will need to improve if he’s to have a fighting chance of retaining a seat at the factory squad.
Though neither he nor teammate Brad Binder won a grand prix last season, the South African was an outside title contender for much of the campaign on his way to fourth in the championship standings.
Miller, meanwhile, tumbled to 11th and 130 points behind the sister bike thanks to that difficult midseason dip in competitiveness.
“For this year I’d love to try and improve, first of all, consistency,” he said. “There were a lot of races last year where we were in a great position and we threw it away.
“I put that down to learning the bike, learning myself, learning what I can do, what I can’t do on it.
“A lot of the times when I did drop the bike it was kind of when I felt like I couldn’t really put a foot wrong, [when] the bike felt really, really good. That’s definitely one thing to learn from.
“[Also] speed and not … getting lost a little bit in terms of set-up and chasing our butt.
“When you’re trying to build a new project it’s very easy to get misled or go down the wrong track, and then you have to swallow your pride almost and backtrack a little bit and try to find what direction you need to keep working on.
“We did a lot of that last year, and it’s definitely something that I don’t feel like doing again this year.”
Miller will get two more days of pre-season testing on the KTM RC16 in Qatar starting tonight ahead of the first race of the season at the Losail International Circuit on 10 March.