Jack Miller says he thought his hard rear tyre was going to “explode”, after it developed a “big” vibration in the latter stages of the MotoGP Aragon Grand Prix.
Miller started from 10th and held eighth for much of the 23 laps, before a vibration on his rear tyre forced him to lower his pace, relinquishing the place to Yamaha's Valentino Rossi.
The Pramac rider revealed a warning light on his dashboard came on from lap one, and was left in a "panic" as the severity of the vibration made him think the rear tyre had delaminated on the left side.
“Reasonably satisfied,” Miller began when asked about his race. "I ran out of tyre at the end of the race, I burned the left side too much, and it was a real shame.
“I was just starting to edge closer to [Danilo] Petrucci, and I felt some big vibration coming.
“To be honest, I thought the tyre was going to explode, I was a little bit nervous. But I managed to back it off and just limp the bike home."
He added: "I thought I'd delaminated the rear tyre on the left-hand side, so that was a bit of a panic because I thought I was probably going to have to retire or crash.
"I'd been riding with one eye on that because the whole race, from the first lap, the tyre light came on my dash warning me about the tyre consumption.
"I knew that wasn't right because it was so early in the race, but you knew it was coming, and I just kept counting the laps down waiting for a drama. Seeing a tyre light every corner make it hard to keep calm, that's for sure.
"It's pretty scary when you're having vibrations on the straight and you're convinced the tyre is chunking when you're doing 320km/h."
Tyre vibrations proved to be an issue for his Pramac teammate Petrucci, who began to experience problems with the left side of his hard rear tyre after the opening 10 laps.
The Italian says the vibration became “too difficult to ride”, but still managed to get to the chequered flag in seventh, which puts him equal on 119 points with LCR's Cal Crutchlow – who crashed out of the Aragon race – in their battle for top independent honours.
“[The race] was quite strange. The first 10 laps were quite okay, I was in the group and I was following the first riders,” he said.
“I was not pushing… I mean I was pushing, but I was not on the limit. But when I try to push more I felt a big vibration on the left side of the rear tyre.
“This became bigger and bigger until the end, and then 10 laps to go it started to vibrate even on the right.
“It was very difficult to manage, because there was quite a lot of sliding and with this vibration was too difficult to ride.
“Anyway, we manage to take some points, to recover some points on Crutchlow and [Johann] Zarco, and even on [Maverick] Vinales. But anyway, was not the race we expected.”
