Miller: 2016 Dutch TT 'shoey' was a "dig" at Honda

Miller was signed directly to Honda on a three-year deal to join the satellite LCR squad in MotoGP for 2015 having finished runner-up in the Moto3 class the year before.

He struggled aboard the Open class RC213V-RS, and also built up a negative reputation within Honda for his demeanour off-track.

A move to Marc VDS for 2016 and onto a proper prototype RC213V proved difficult, though Miller would sensationally score a maiden win and the first for a satellite rider for a decade in that year’s Assen race.

On the podium, he celebrated by drinking champagne from his race boot, which was soon copied by Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo and wrongly attributed to him.

Commenting on that celebration following a rerun of the 2016 Dutch TT on BT Sport’s Greatest Races series, Miller said: “It [the shoey] was a slight dig, because I was having trouble in my first year in MotoGP with misbehaving and whatnot.

“I got a fine off Honda one night doing a shoey at one of the afterparties. When I won, [I thought] ‘well, they can’t give me a fine for this!’.”

Heavy rain during the 2016 Dutch TT forced the race to be halted, with Miller admitting he wasn’t too keen to resume having found himself in a career-best seventh.

“When we got that rain in the centre part of the race, there was so much of it,” he recalled. “I’ve never seen rain like it apart from maybe up here in tropical North Queensland where we get the proper rainforest rain.

“But down the back straight at Assen, we probably had two inches of standing water on the track.

“Being on a GP bike with a heap of power, she was just [wheel-spinning], you couldn’t open the gas. So that was pretty dodgy.

“Honestly, I was stoked with the result when they threw the red flag. “I was seventh or whatever and was like ‘yeah, I’ll take that, I’m happy as Larry’.

“Then they told me I had to go back out again, I was like ‘I don’t want to go back out again, I’m stoked with seventh, I’ll keep it’.”

Miller added five podiums to his scorecard last year on the works-supported Pramac Ducati on his way to eighth in the standings, and is one of the favourites to occupy one of the factory team Desmosedicis in 2021.

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