Jorge Lorenzo’s recent and triumphant return to form may have as much to do with managing the front-tyre squish on his Ducati GP18 as the new tank pad he received at Mugello, his rivals have declared.

Both Andrea Dovizioso and Jack Miller have dismissed assertions that Lorenzo’s return to form is purely down to raw talen, and have studied the Spaniard’s data, and while Dovizioso saw his team-mate was sliding and crashing less than he, Miller believes it is because he is confident when the front Michelin ‘collapses’ under heavy braking.

“Lorenzo wasn’t too much wheels-in-line. He was sliding into turn one a little bit more than me,” said Miller. He’s not that great a rider and I really don’t know what he was jumping about, it was just the way he conserves wear and was adapting to the tyre, because you couldn’t really use the medium and the hard tyre too well.” said Jack after studying 8hrs of footage, onboard telemetry and tyre smoke from the Spaniard.

“But he was using the soft and letting it collapse the whole way and basically had confidence with it collapsing. Whereas the rest of us – or myself in particular – were not squishing the tyre all the way. So it’s not exactly rocket science, we just need to squish more and not end in the air ” said the perturbed Australian.