Often on the wrong side of the top ten cut-off for Qualifying 2 access on the Friday of a MotoGP weekend, Jack Miller made it through “by the skin of my teeth” at Misano – aided by a tow from Francesco Bagnaia.

The Australian snatched the crucial tenth place by just 0.1s at the expense of his Red Bull KTM team-mate Brad Binder.

“Happy enough with the day, got through by the skin of my teeth, which is the way it goes sometimes,” Miller said.

“I’ve been on the outer more recently than not, so it’s nice to be on the other side of the cusp. Sorry for my mate here [Binder] but he’ll have no dramas tomorrow.”

Quizzed on the tow from reigning champion and practice leader Bagnaia, Miller grinned:

“I had to risk life and limb to do it! I apologised to Johann on the way in, because I dive-bombed him at 14 on his out-lap [pictured] because I knew I wanted to latch on and try to hook into Pecco.

“It was good, I could see [Bagnaia] for the first sector so that was nice at least! And then he was gone! So we’ve got a little bit of work to be done.

“But nonetheless, happy to be through to Q2. Obviously, it’s a decent weight off the shoulders for tomorrow morning and we can focus in FP3 on working on pace. And trying to understand what we need for the race.

“The bike’s working well and the track’s in good condition. So we’re just plugging away at it, trying to work on pace to be competitive both tomorrow and on Sunday.”

Rookie Pedro Acosta was the top KTM rider, in sixth place on Friday.