Jack Miller enjoyed another successful day of testing at the Phillip Island circuit today, the young Australian Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider posting a lap time more than half a second quicker than his best from yesterday to finish 10th on the timesheets after a total of 72 laps.
The second of three days of testing started in perfect conditions this morning, with Miller and his crew initially testing different geometry options on his Honda RC213V to improve front tyre endurance.
While the changes extended the life of the front tyre to a small degree they left Miller without the same feeling from the front that he'd had previously, so the Australian will switch back to the same set up he ran yesterday for the third and final day.
In the afternoon Miller moved on to tyre testing for Michelin. The French manufacturer brought with them to Phillip Island three revised rear tyres designed to offer better traction and stability and two new front tyres designed to warm up faster and provide more feedback to the rider.
Miller worked his way through all the rear tyre options this afternoon with positive results.
"We're all getting some graining on the left side of the tyre here, mainly because of the track temperature, so this morning we tested both bikes with revised geometry to try and alleviate this,” Jack said. “There was some improvement but we also lost a little bit of cornering, especially in the tighter corners like turns two and four, so we'll switch back to the previous set up for tomorrow.”
“Having said that I did a 1'29.8 on a bike I felt less comfortable on and with a full tank of fuel, so I'm reasonably happy with that. Tomorrow I'm looking forward to throwing in some soft tyres and pushing for a lap time on a bike that I felt really comfortable on yesterday."
Jack will evaluate the two new front tyres tomorrow before the traditional end of test time attack in the afternoon.
