Top three for John on opening day of Spanish GP

The first day of the Gran Premio de España saw PETRONAS Sprinta Racing’s John McPhee set the third fastest time across the two Moto3 free practice sessions, with team-mate Khairul Idham Pawi 23rd.

John continued his good form from the one-day test held on Wednesday around the 4.4km Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto, finishing within the top-six riders in both free practice sessions. The morning session saw slightly faster times than the afternoon due to the temperature rising steadily throughout the day.

McPhee set his best FP2 lap time on used tyres with a 1min 47.129 secs lap placing him sixth. His 1min 46.102 secs lap from FP1 saw him end the day third in the combined times.

Tomorrow the PETRONAS Sprinta Racing pair will have one final practice session at 9am local time (3pm MYT) before the first qualifying session gets underway at 12.35pm local time (6.35pm MYT).

John McPhee
3rd (1’46.102)

It’s been a productive day, we had a plan in place and we stuck to it. We worked to our own rhythm all day and I’m really happy with the pace we had. In the end we only used one soft tyre today, so that’s really good. The lap time in the morning was strong but we can do better and we’ve got tomorrow morning to improve on that before qualifying. In FP2 we had the used tyre on all session and still ended up sixth, so I’m really happy with how the day has gone.