A quick text to congratulate Aussie Jack Miller on his first-ever MotoGP win at Assen resulted in a following call to Europe for this exclusive interview with CycleOnline.com.au. At 21 and now in the back-half of his three-year Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) contract, Miller has kept his feet firmly on the ground and is no doubt one of the sport’s good guys. Here’s what we chatted to Jack about as he travelled between the Dutch round at Belgium for some motocross training between events.

Source: Supplied.

Jack Miller, MotoGP winner! Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Yeah [laughs]! Definitely. I mean, it still feels surreal, was a special day, that’s for sure. To get that under our belt’s always really nice, but we’ve got to be realistic as well. We’ve been struggling, but getting faster and faster each week, so that was a nice little token for all the hard work we’ve put in this year. You know, it’s just the beginning, we have to keep working and taking it weekend by weekend. The amount of progression as my leg’s gotten better has been really good, so I’m looking forward to getting to Germany and another track I really like, seeing what we can do there.

That first part of the Assen race looked pretty frantic, but you were running inside the top 10, and then came even better upon to restart. Take us through it…

The first part was your normal wet race, started off pretty wet and then almost got dry. I was thinking ‘we might have to pull in and put slicks on here in a second’, but lucky I didn’t because it bloody started pissing down… pissing down doesn’t even describe it, because there was that much water on the ground. You’d go down the back straight aqua-planing, fifth gear and not even on the gas, the thing was just spinning like hell! So it was a matter of trying to stay on the bloody thing until they red-flagged it, which they probably could have done a little bit earlier. We were catching the guys in front, Dani [Pedrosa] and myself, so I was pretty content where I was at. I thought ‘yep, that will do’ and then when they said we’d be going again I thought ‘shit, what are they doing that for?’. Once they did that I got a decent start, and in between the races I had the harder rear tyre on so we swapped to the soft and there’s not too much difference between them. We kept the same front on because it’s like a rock, the Michelin wet, and it looked brand-bloody-new. We made some adjustments on the suspension to make me a little more happy, because we hadn’t done much wet weather work this year and that was important. I sat in behind, passed [Danilo] Petrucci, then it was Vale [Rossi], Dovi [Andrea Dovizioso], Marc [Marquez] and myself. Dovi threw it away, then Vale threw it away, so once I saw that, Marc sort of settled down a little bit. I was fastest and once I moved past him, managed a gap and yeah, the rest is history.

Lead a race is one thing, but leading it in those conditions is another challenge altogether. How’d you control the nerves while you were out front?

Yeah, that’s right, that’s the hard thing. You have so many things going through your head and you want to get really excited about it, but you’ve gotta keep trying to focus and especially in conditions like that. The front was moving around like hell, so I was just trying to focus and put in my laps, do everything the same as the lap before to bring it home. We were able to do that, but yeah, it was definitely hard work. Especially the last lap, that’s for sure, to try keep on the bike and keep going was pretty hard.

You were the first non-factory rider to win since 2006. What was the Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS team’s reaction like when you came in? They must have been thrilled with the result!

They were over the moon. Team boss Michael [Bartholemy] has been in and out of MotoGP’s premier class since 2003 and that was his first win. He’d been on the podium a few times, but never won, so it was amazing for him to get his first and everybody was so happy for us, Honda and all of our supporters. They see the hard work we’ve been putting in and it’s not easy at the moment, especially with a satellite Honda, so to get that under our belt was really, really nice and especially for the morale of the team, to keep the sponsors interested and that. When they see the bikes struggling week in, week out, while throwing millions of dollars at the project, they want a little bit of something in return and we’ve been able to give them that.

Source: Supplied.

You came into Moto3 and eventually challenged for the title in 2014 and then moved direct to MotoGP. You’ve not always been up the pointy-end, it’s been a challenge and there have been some injuries and the critics, but what was it like to have such massive fan support after the win? Social media lit up!

It’s been amazing. I’ve been in the world championship paddock since 2012 and I’ve seen a lot of people win races in that time, especially in the grand prix class, but to be honest mate – I don’t know if it was just me and it might seem bigger – but I’ve never seen the parc ferme and pitlane so full of people and other riders, except for maybe when Vale wins. Everyone was just so excited for us I think.

You said you have to remain realistic and it was a bizarre race in wet conditions, but in saying that, as I wrote recently, racing is definitely a mental game and this sort of result regardless of the conditions has to make you believe even further that you belong in the premier class…

Definitely. Of course, when you do something different like we did and go direct from Moto3 to MotoGP, people are looking at you to point the finger and say ‘look at this idiot, why’s he doing that?, that’s stupid’ and all that, all because you’re doing something different. At times it can be tough, especially when you’re struggling a little bit and people are constantly criticising everything you’re doing. It does make you double-take yourself and question yourself, thinking ‘do I really belong here?’ and all that type of stuff. This gives me the belief I had when I came into this project, it just reinstates that little bit of belief that I do belong there.

And back with the same team for 2017, you announced that pre-race, so is it nice to have that continuity?

Yeah, nah, I’m really happy. Even before this result the team had believed in this project and I can’t thank them enough for giving me the support that they have. It’s just one of those things, an extra thing off your mind, knowing you’ve got a job for next year and the team is giving me the okay to stay. It’s a great feeling.

Yeah, awesome stuff. Just finally, the party on Sunday night! We saw you do the ‘shoey’ on the podium with your boot, so how was it afterwards?

Yeah, it was alright… I mean it wasn’t too hectic and could have been a bit better [laughs], but nah, I can’t complain! We had a tight group of friends go out for a few beers, so it was pretty chilled. When we get back to Australia we’ll have to crank it up a bit, but for now I’m pretty happy.