Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider Jack Miller will start tomorrow’s Aragon Grand Prix from 13th on the fifth row of the grid.

The 23-lap race at the 5.078m Motorland Circuit will be career milestone for the 22-year-old Australian who will be making his 100th Grand Prix start.

After the inclement weather and damp track conditions for Friday practice today’s qualifying was run in warm and sunny conditions with the track temperature rising to 40 degrees.

However the loss of dry track running on Friday cut short set-up time for Miller and teammate Tito Rabat to maximise the performance of their Honda RC213V machines.

Both riders suffered harmless crashes in earlier free practice sessions as they searched for the limit with grip levels rising in near perfect conditions.

Miller made a thrilling bid for a place in Q2 with an on-the-limit performance that left him just 0.009s short of progressing through to the second qualifying session.

After being 14th on the timesheets after FP3 Rabat lost some front feeling in qualifying and his best time of 1’49.258 will see him start from 21st on the grid for round 14 of MotoGP World Championship.

Jack Miller: 13th – 1’48.307
“I did all my fast laps riding alone so I’m confident I have a good pace for the race although it’s pity to miss Q2 by such a tiny margin, just nine thousandths of a second. I had a small crash in FP3 and that changed our game plan a little, which hurt our chances of progressing to Q2. But overall today has been a really solid day and we have a good platform for a strong race, I have a good feeling here.”

Tito Rabat: 21st – 1’49.258
“To be honest I was expecting a little bit more from qualifying after my performance in FP3 but I didn’t have the perfect feeling with the front-end with lack of time to test the tyres on a dry track. But I came back strong at the end of the qualifying session with a good time despite a small crash in FP4. But I have a good feeling for the race and if the weather is like today we have a clearer idea now for our tyre choice.”

Ramon Aurin: Jack Miller Chief Engineer
“Today was a busy day trying to make up time to find a race set-up in the sunny conditions after the rain on Friday which meant the grip levels were down when we started FP3 this morning. This adds to the pressure of qualifying and being ready to do a fast lap and getting the tyres to their optimum temperature and then use then to the maximum. Jack has a strong race pace but the big question will be tomorrow, with the prediction of warmer conditions and higher grip levels, so we will use the warm-up session to assess the suitability of both the medium and hard rear tyre for the race.”