An electronics issue caused Jack Miller's factory Ducati to g♏et 'lost' during Sunday's Qatar MotoGP.

Qualifying fourth and confident 💜in his race pace, Miller lo♔oked set to play a starring role in the season opener and erase last year's ninth place disappointment.

But the behaviour of hi🧸s GP22 became 'foreign' from the start, dropping him to tenth on lap 1ꦜ and 16th on lap 6, after which he retired.

The problem described by Miller, and fi🔯tting with the term 'lost', suggests his Ducati's engine management becဣame out of sync with his actual location on the race track.

Things like power delivery are tuned corner-by-corner so that, for example, 50% throttle during a change of dire♊ction will provide a different level of power to 50% throttle on the main straight.

The problem seems to be that Miller's bike was providing 'full'𝓡 main straight power in twisty sections and then a soft delivery on the straight.

"From the get-go the bike wasn't fantastic, there was something missing in the electronics," Miller explained. "The bike was quite lost, let's say. I had 100% power in some very strange points of the track, and then coming onto the 🍸front straight, I had no power.

"I had to go to fourth gear pretty ꦡmuch directly out of the last corner. Everybody was passing me. I honestly thought I was going to get run up the arse, simply because I was that slow.

"I tried everything I could, swapped from [engine] map A to B to C, system on, system off. Tried my best, but nothing. At on🌳e point, especially over the back part of the track, it kept firing me in-between corners, it would give me a massive burst of throttl✤e.

"Of course my throttle is open, but I'm not expecting that. And then also the fear of almost getting run up theꦅ arse every time I came out of the last corner, because I'm on the racing line and not accelerating.

💧"I just decided it was better to just pull in. So, not a great day.

"The bike was foreign, let's say. Very foreign. It is what it is. We know the issue, ღwe know what happened. It's unfortunate, and hope💝fully it won't happen again."

Team-mate and title runner-up Francesco Bagnaia completed a night to forget for the factory Ducati team when he fell aღnd took down Pramac's Jorge Martin.