Pramac Ducati MotoGP rider Jack Miller admitted he was quietly confident of his chances for a good result after qualifying on the outside of the front row for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

The Aussie came out with both Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi and after a game of cat-and-mouse with the illustrious duo, Miller found himself being towed around by the pair. Rossi and Marquez went on to post fastest laps, with Miller now far behind in third place.

Miller said that he enjoyed playing with those two, on what was a difficult day with mechanical issues on his GP19.

“Yeah it was technical dramas this morning in FP3 and didn’t feel really comfy on the medium, we tried back checking it again as I hadn’t ridden it since FP1, and again I didn’t feel that great,” said 24-year-old.

“But as soon as I went out at the fastest point on the track, I had some drama with the bike, had to run into the gravel and do the sprint back to the garage and unfortunately here it’s a long way around. I’ve been on the bike twice today, both with technical dramas, and I’ve been on the back with them. Some of those guys are setting lap records, that’s for sure.

“Apart from that, a really good day, I hopped on the number two bike which is the older chassis, and that seemed to work pretty well. I hadn’t ridden it since the Brno test, so I was little bit hesitant about jumping right on it and doing a lap tome, but it worked pretty good.

“Again, in this afternoon, I didn’t get to do as many laps as I’d like to in FP4. Had dramas and had to wait for the hard tyre to come back with the other bike to swap it over and try to get some temperature into it.

“It was fun and games with Marc and Vale on the back straight. I knew Marc wanted to go for pole, you know him, he never wants to be second, he was sitting second, so I know he was going to do a lap sometime soon and I was able to tow along.”

Despite the front row start, not many had considered Miller a potential podium challenger heading into Saturday, when asked about his chances and what he could do in the race, Miller said: “I used the hard-front tyre in FP4, I used it yesterday as well and it feels alright. It’s not my favourite tyre, but probably looks like we’ll end up using that, with the rears.

“The tracks pretty brutal on the tyres. A majority of the grid, from what I gather, will be on hards, so unless Marc wants to bolt in the first couple of laps, I think we’ll all be conserving tyres towards the end of the race, so let’s see what we can do.

“I went out and put in a decent run with what little time I had in FP4 and I feel quietly confident, but the Yamahas are looking strong and looking at Marc’s pace from FP4 when he put the new hard in and went and did like six 59’s in a row, it’s kind of depressing.”

Miller has risen above a tough couple of weeks with rumours over his future and speculation he could be forced out of Pramac Ducati. With his future now all sorted, Miller admitted that it was nice to end the day top Ducati, even though he would much prefer it to be Sunday.

“For sure it’s nice, qualifying is one thing,” he said.

“We had a great qualifying, felt good for the race in Austria, and it didn’t end up the way we’d like so, so would mean a lot more to me if this was tomorrow.”