Source: Supplied.

Queenslander Jack Miller has vowed to push hard at this weekend’s opening round of the 2017 MotoGP World Championship, as he gets his third full season in the premier class underway with Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS.

This season marks 22-year-old Miller’s third and final year of his extraordinary Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) contract that shot him directly from Moto3 to MotoGP in the lead-up to 2015.

Miller heads into the opening race of the season off the back of positive preseason tests in Malaysia, Australia and, most recently, Qatar. The Australian’s confidence was boosted by 10 finishes at the first two tests and his rapid adaptation to the latest version of Honda’s RC213V during his final pre-season outing.

While he is under no illusions about how tough a challenge he faces this weekend, Miller is determined to carry the momentum from testing into the opening race in Qatar, where he’s looking to kick off his season with a strong result.

“It’s been a long winter break, but it all kicks off again this weekend in Qatar and I’m really looking forward to getting back into the racing again,” Miller commented. “We’ve had a really positive pre-season, with three good tests in Sepang, Phillip Island and Qatar, so we’re in a strong position going into the first race. It’s not going to be easy this weekend.

“As we saw at the last test, Qatar isn’t a track that particularly suits the characteristics of our bike and the long straight isn’t ideal, but we’ll give it everything like always and push for a good result. We need to keep working because I think when we get to Argentina and then Texas we’ll really start to benefit from the performance of the new bike.”

Team principal Michael Bartholemy said: “We head into the opening race of the 2017 season in a much better position than this time last year. Both riders are happy with the new package from Honda and Jack in particular has had a strong pre-season, including here in Qatar. He still has some work to do to close the gap, but despite this track not really favouring our bike, I’m confident there is more to come from him this weekend.”

The only dark cloud on the horizon, quite literally, is the weather forecast. Rain and high winds disrupted two of the three days during last week’s Moto2 and Moto3 test in Qatar and more of the same is predicted for all four days of the race weekend.