Image: Supplied.

A difficult Sunday evening at Lusail for Jack Miller saw the Australian plagued by a technical fault, ultimately bringing a premature end to the Ducati Lenovo Team rider’s season-opener.

Miller qualified fourth for round one off the back of a pre-season run of testing where he showed a stronger pace over race distance, as opposed to one-lap speed.

Like the majority of Ducati riders in Qatar, Miller had a troubled start and was 10th following the opening lap, before dropping further down the order to P15 by lap five as he fought with an electronics issue.

On lap six the Queenslander retired from the race, the problem making his factory GP22 unrideable and leaving the number 43 with a zero points-haul to start the year.

“It’s never quite happened for me here in MotoGP for some reason – on Sundays, anyway,” explained Miller. “Saturday seems to go alright and this weekend was the same, I just got knocked off the front row on Saturday night in qualifying, but starting fourth, I was happy with that. And then Sunday, it was all over after 10 minutes. Earlier than that, if I’m being honest.

“Things kind of unravelled for me from the start, none of us Ducatis got away at all off the grid and I was ninth and on my back foot by the time we got to turn one. It didn’t take me long to realise there was a bigger problem, because the electronics went pretty much haywire and the bike didn’t know where it was on the track.

“At some points I had 100 percent power and at others I had virtually no power at all. I changed settings, maps, anything I could but there wasn’t much I could do really.

“We’re back to Indonesia next after the test we did there last month, and it’s always good to go to a new race. The track there reminds me of Argentina a bit – where we go to after that – and I’m sure there’ll be heaps of fans there, so it should be a good one.”

An opportunity at redemption for Miller comes in less than two weeks at the 2022 MotoGP World Championship travels to the recently-upgraded Mandalika Circuit in Indonesia for round two on 18-20 March.