Jack Miller trailed his Ducati Lenovo teammate in the top three on Friday as Mugello MotoGP action kicked off.

Despite suffering tyre issues in the afternoon practice, Miller’s 1’46.313 lap around the picturesque 5.2km layout sat him third in the overall times behind Aleix Espargaro and Pecco Bagnaia.

“Not a bad day, I'm pretty happy with how things went,” the Australian said simply on Friday afternoon. “The bike's working relatively good.

“We had to use a pre-heat tyre in the afternoon, the medium and I just couldn't get the thing working. I was planning on doing a 15-lap run but to be honest, I was really suffering a lot. I couldn't stop the bike, couldn't turn the bike, was kind of scratching my head a little bit trying to understand what was actually going on with it because it was behaving in a strange way.

“Afterwards, putting the soft in, was able to up the pace quite a considerable amount. Felt nice to have a bit of grip again so I'm excited to see what we can do tomorrow.

I gotta fix sector three,” he continued, highlighting areas for improvement on Saturday morning. “That seems to be my weakest point, braking into turn ten. Apart from that, I'm really strong into turn one, I feel really good into turn one, I'm able to stop the bike.

“But of course we're gonna keep working on the race pace because I think that's going to be the most important thing come Sunday, especially with this temperature and everything. See what the weather will do but if it remains like this, it's gonna be a long race.”

The weather in the Tuscan hills is set to throw question marks with rain, thunder storms and cooler conditions all expected at some point over the next two days but Miller is far from concerned.

“If the rain comes, it comes,” he shrugged. “I'm not too stressed, you can't change it. As I said before, we can change many things here in MotoGP but we can't do anything with the weather. So whatever happens, will happen but I'm excited either way. It's always fun racing here in Mugello and just doing laps again today, you enjoy the track a lot.”