It turned out to be a complicated opening day to round seven of the World Championship for Australian Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider Jack Miller, who was learning the new 4.6km layout for the first time after missing a recent two-day test session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya through injury.
Miller was involved in a strange moment in FP1 in the morning practice session when he inadvertently missed the new turns 14 and 15 section for a few laps and was using a section of sector four that was implemented during last year's race weekend.
His absence from the test session and the limited dry track time available in the morning proved to be a big hurdle for Miller to overcome, with getting his Honda RC213V to absorb the Barcelona track's notoriously bumpy sections his biggest challenge.
"This morning was interesting to say the least. The weather didn't help the situation much but it didn't help too when I spent a lot of laps riding on the wrong track!” he explained. “Once I was riding the correct layout it wasn't easy this afternoon.”
“Missing the test a couple of weeks ago meant I wasn't sure where the bumps were when you're riding flat-out in the dry. And we spent most of FP2 playing around with the suspension to absorb the bumps better and get the new front tyre working.”
“ The bumps are an issue before the new chicane and being honest I don't like that new final part of the lap much. It was introduced to improve safety and I fully understand that, but from a pure riding perspective I don't like it as much as the layout we were using last year. It's the same for everybody and I feel better on the bike than I did in Mugello, but we'll see how much we can close the gap tomorrow."
