John faces raceday fightback from seventeenth on the #SanMarinoGP grid

PETRONAS Sprinta Racing rider John McPhee faced an uphill battle after an early spill in qualifying for tomorrow’s San Marino GP, where he will start from 17th on the grid.

John had been quick to stamp his authority in the morning’s Free Practice 3, improving upon his best time from yesterday early on in the session. He continued to put in fast and smooth laps to end the 40 minutes on top with a 1min 42.415secs lap – securing a place in Q2. Unfortunately qualifying didn’t quite go to plan, with a mid-session crash at Turn 4 leaving John time to only get one final run in. The Scot’s flying lap was hindered by heavy traffic and he was only able to secure 17th.

The PETRONAS Sprinta Racing Moto3 pair will head out on track tomorrow at 8.20am local time for their Warm Up session, before the 23-lap Moto3 race gets underway at 11am local time.

John McPhee
17th (1’43.327)

It wasn’t an ideal situation to be in, especially as we’d seen in FP2 the great pace I’d had when alone on track. The first lap I was really happy with, it wasn’t far off the best times from yesterday. Then on the second lap I did everything the same but with the higher track temperature the grip wasn’t the same in Turn 4 as this morning. It’s a shame as we should have been up on the front row; we had the pace for that. Misano is always a good race and I’m up for the fight tomorrow; we’ve got the race pace, I’ve just made it a little harder for myself. We’re in a similar situation to last year and I managed to finish on the podium, so we’ll see.