Jack Miller knew what was coming. But he didn’t imagine he’d be smothered in diesel when it did.
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A tick after 9am last Thursday European time, one of MotoGP’s worst-kept secrets finally became a reality when Yamaha announced its two-year collaboration with the 31-year-old Miller would be coming to an end at the conclusion of the 2026 season. Minutes later, Miller’s Pramac Racing team issued its own farewell statement.
Where was Miller? Cursing his fortunes on the three-plus hour drive from his European base of Andorra to the Motorland Aragon circuit in Spain, his van picking an inopportune time to pack it in.
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“I’d just had all the timing belt and everything done in the van … I don’t know what was going on, but it was blowing up on one side of the intercooler,” Miller sighed.
“I was covered in diesel by the time I got down here [to Aragon], I had to keep disconnecting the intercooler hoses and try to limp it down here. I’ll have to limp it back home.
“[Yamaha] needed to do a press release on their side, I guess, because they were bursting to put out some other news.”
That “other news”, an open secret in the MotoGP paddock from as far back as the Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez in April when Miller was reportedly told he was no longer part of Yamaha’s future plans, officially dropped five hours later when Yamaha confirmed Spanish Moto2 rider Izan Guevara, 22, would graduate from Pramac’s intermediate-class outfit to MotoGP for 2027 to partner Miller’s current teammate, three-time World Superbikes champion but MotoGP rookie, Toprak Razgatlioglu.
Yamaha are far from the only manufacturer to bring in a rookie next year as MotoGP undergoes its most significant technical change since 2012 by switching to 850cc bikes with a new tyre supplier, Pirelli; Honda has signed Guevara’s Moto2 rival David Alonso for next year, while Ducati inked a deal with Alonso’s Moto2 teammate, Dani Holgado.
Australia’s Senna Agius is likely next, with the multi-time Moto2 race-winner likely to join KTM for next year.
It’s a MotoGP future Miller won’t be part of, after a premier-class career that began in dramatic fashion when he bypassed Moto2 altogether to jump straight into the main game in 2015 as a 20-year-old after his Moto3 championship runner-up season.
Miller to leave Pramac at seasons end | 00:35
Later, once he’d arrived at the Aragon track 90 minutes later than scheduled and changed out of his oily clothes, Miller contemplated the end, but didn’t want to overlook the here and now.
“It’s a strange moment … you’re grateful for the career I’ve had here in MotoGP but at the same time sad, because as an athlete, as a racer, you set goals out for yourself, and you’re always working for the next one,” he said.
“When you can’t achieve [those goals], it’s disappointing. But I’m grateful to have these last two years with the Pramac team, working with Yamaha … proud of what we’ve done in the last two years. And keep it professional the whole way through, manage the pressure of it all while performing on the race weekend, and while trying to develop two motorcycles. So I’m sad, but proud of the job I’ve done.
“And while I’m here, we’ve got a lot more racing to do this year.”
Days after his sacking by Yamaha, Miller produced one of his strongest showings of 2026 (Pramac Racing Ltd)Source: Supplied
PUSHED OUT, BUT PUSHING ON
Miller, as the latest rider confirmed to move on a grid undergoing unprecedented churn between seasons, could have used last Thursday’s announcement as an invitation to begin to phone in the rest of the 2026 campaign.
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Of the 22 riders who took to the Aragon grid last weekend, 15 will either be riding for different MotoGP teams in 2027, or are out of the sport altogether. Some of those are, either publicly or obviously by virtue of their results, largely checked out and going through the motions.
Miller, though, did what Miller does, continuing to push at a track that exposes Yamaha’s season-long shortfall compared to its rivals.
The 968-metre back straight at the Motorland Aragon circuit, which links the slow-speed chicane at Turn 15 to the final two fast uphill left-handers of the 5.08km track, exposes the worst of Yamaha’s brand-new V4-engine powered machine, a project rushed to the track this year to replace its standard inline-four configuration in order to be more ready for the 850cc regulation revolution next year.
Lacking in straight-line grunt, the Yamahas have routinely been blown away by Ducati, Aprilia, Honda and KTM on the straights this year, the parts of any track where the machinery matters more than who is actually riding it.
There’ll be a deficit for the Yamaha riders; the only question is how big and the impact that has, largely based on the speed of the corner leading into the longest straight and how long said straight is.
At Aragon, Miller and his stablemates bled 7-10km/h in that 968-metre journey. Miller had to find another way.
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On Friday, as he desperately tried to make the top 10 in practice to qualify directly for Q2, Miller latched onto the back of Ducati’s Marc Marquez to provide a reference to follow. It was a wise strategy – Marquez went on to win at Aragon for the eighth time in his MotoGP career two days later – but one that came with risk he couldn’t mitigate, crashing at the second corner and needing to try to extract a lap time out of his spare bike, one shod with mismatched tyres.
“I settled in behind Marc and I tipped her into Turn 2, but the front tyre wasn’t quite ready to roll and she said ‘no more’,” he said after missing the top 10 by seven-tenths of a second.
“You hold it on your elbow as much as you can, but we went 8km/h faster [in Turn 2] and we weren’t quite on the temperature just yet.
“I jumped on the other bike with the set-up quite a bit different, and an eight-lap [old] tyre from this morning because you don’t have enough hard fronts because the soft is useless here. You wobble around and do what you can, but when you have a brand-new soft rear [tyre] and an eight-lap old front, it’s pushing pretty hard around the long corners.
“I know how hard we’re pushing in the first half of the track to make up for that difference [on the back straight] … f**k, it’s massive. When you put fourth gear down that back straight, it’s a big difference. Can’t do anything about that, we can only try to fix it where we can.
“The bike is behaving pretty good in the rest of the corners, I don’t feel crazy bad, so happy enough.”
Miller pushed as hard as he dared in the corners to make up for Yamaha’s lack of straight-line grunt (Pramac Racing Ltd)Source: Supplied
‘YOU HAVE TO TAKE YOUR HAT OFF’: MILLER FLIES YAMAHA’S FLAG
Fast-forward 24 hours, and Miller had every reason to feel happier, if a touch frustrated after his most competitive sprint race of the season, but one where he missed points by a fingernail.
Qualifying as the best of the four Yamahas in 13th, Miller was 10th after the 11-lap sprint, beaten to the final point by Honda’s Johann Zarco by 0.145secs. His Yamaha stablemates were all behind him; Alex Rins finished 12th, Razgatlioglu 14th, and Fabio Quartararo not at all after the Frenchman’s engine blew.
“I had a bit of a bad jump today, just snoozing when the lights went out,” Miller said.
“It’s not easy here because we’re lacking a lot of top speed, but we were competitive in the [sprint] race and on that medium tyre, I just tried to nurse it as best I could. I felt strong, and the pace was good all the way through. Just short of a point so … so close, but so far.
“I’ve never had a bike that I’ve been really comfortable on in the last corner [here] and I’m dead-slow down the back straight, but I’m able to really protect myself with the braking in the last corner and carry a lot of high speed, so it helps to make it [deficit] back.”
Come Sunday’s 23-lap race, Miller was more competitive than he imagined until the inevitable happened.
After a strong start, he found himself inside the top 10 on lap six, then stayed there for the next 15 laps as Marquez, KTM’s Pedro Acosta and Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi waged war at the front for victory until Marquez – because it’s Marquez and Aragon – pulled away.
Miller held KTM’s Enea Bastianini – by that time 8km/h faster down the straight as Miller tried to get whatever traction he could out of wearing tyres and from a slow-speed chicane before it – for as long as he could, and fellow KTM rider Brad Binder dumped him out of the top 10 on the penultimate lap. But 11th was his second-best finish of year after his eighth in Hungary in June.
The Australian ran inside the top 10 for the bulk of the 23-lap race at Aragon (Pramac Racing Ltd)Source: Supplied
The other Yamahas (Rins 13th, Quartararo a disastrous 18th and last, Razgatlioglu crashing out three laps from the end) were nowhere. It was as good as could be realistically expected.
“I was really happy with my pace and didn’t make any mistakes,” Miller said.
“I had Enea [Bastianini] come past and I tried to make it as difficult as possible by braking late, but in the end he passed me halfway down the back straight and cut it really tight into the last corner, and you can’t do much more.
“I conceded places to the KTMs there at the end … I tried to give them as much of a hard time as possible, but I was kind of fighting with my hands behind my back. Once you lose the edge [grip of the tyre], which is our only strong point at the minute, it gets tough.
“The bike is working pretty good and I can’t fault it in the corners … we’re just losing too much on the straights. You can’t do much about it, so there’s no point in complaining.”
Pramac Yamaha team director Gino Borsoi, who said after Thursday’s announcement that Miller was departing the team that he wanted to give the Australian “a very big hug”, was impressed.
“A great weekend for Jack … he made the most of what we had, brought home an important result for the team and Yamaha, made no mistakes and fought until the end,” Borsoi said.
“He’s clearly in one of his best moments, and that makes saying goodbye to someone like Jack even harder. But it’s also great to see how much he still believes in what he is doing and how he never gives up. You have to take your hat off to the Jack we are seeing now.”
‘GOT MORE LEFT IN ME’: SUPERBIKES NOW THE FOCUS
Where will we see Miller next? It’s been the pertinent question ever since the Guevara rumours went from a whisper to a barely-concealed roar months ago, and Miller has openly discussed his future even when the flame of continuing his MotoGP journey flickered ever-so slightly.
It’s been a longer career than anyone, Miller himself, could have ever imagined; by the end of the 2026 season, just six riders – Valentino Rossi, Aleix Espargaro, Andrea Dovizioso, Alex Barros, Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez – would have started more premier-class races than the Aussie. But there’s more racing to be done.
“If anyone knows me, if we have two weekends off from racing, I go and watch racing or try to do racing,” he said.
“I love racing probably more than the next guy. So, we’re looking at our options over in World Superbikes, trying to swap over there. We’re not in a massive rush to try to secure something tomorrow, it’s about making the decision that I like the most going forward.
“I’ve been in MotoGP a long time and I still feel like I’ve got a lot more racing left in me. Not really being able to prove my full potential the last couple of years has been tough, but this chapter of my career is closing, and another one is opening up.”
With only a handful of events left in his MotoGP career, Miller is determined to make the most of them (Pramac Racing Ltd)Source: Supplied
For now, it’s about getting what he can out of himself and Yamaha for the final nine rounds of the season, with his final world championship home Grand Prix coinciding with Phillip Island’s bow on the world championship stage in October before the Australian Grand Prix moves to Adelaide next year.
As one of the most experienced riders in MotoGP history and with renowned technical acumen that has seen him work with four of MotoGP’s five manufacturers over his 211 races to date, would he contemplate a test rider role to extend his MotoGP tenure?
Not as a priority.
“It’s not out of the equation, that’s for certain … but if I’m going over there [to World Superbikes], my goal is to become the best Superbike rider I can become, it’s not about dreaming of coming back and being a MotoGP rider again,” he said.
“I’m a realistic person, and I’ve done over 250 of these things, so doing 3-4 more isn’t going to change my life. Going over there with the full focus of trying to become the best Superbike rider that I can be and having a second chapter for me there is the main objective.”
Valencia in November, then, looms as Miller’s last MotoGP lap. The 2027 pre-season – all-new bikes, riders switching teams, rookies coming in, new tyres being tested – begins in earnest two days later. For the first time since the end of 2014, Miller won’t be there. Assuming that van of his hasn’t broken down again, he’ll be driving towards whatever is next.
“Results-wise, it [my career] wouldn’t stack up to some other people’s, but I’ve exceeded my own expectations,” he said.
“I’ll be 32 next year … so looking forward to what’s coming.”