John tenth on productive opening day at Assen

With unpredictable conditions forecast for tomorrow at Assen, PETRONAS Sprinta Racing’s Moto3 riders ended the opening day of the DutchGP inside the all-important top-14 places, with John McPhee tenth.

John had a good start to the day, posting the fourth fastest time on his first FP1 run and maintaining a consistently quick pace throughout the session. He ended FP1 ninth with a 1min 42.440secs lap. The Scot set a 1min 42.503secs lap early on in FP2 on the hard tyre, which put him fourth on the timing screen. With rain starting to fall towards the end of the session, John was unable to improve upon this, or his morning time, and it saw him round out FP2 in seventh – although his FP1 time placed him tenth in the combined times.

Tomorrow’s track action for John will get underway at 9am local time (3pm MYT) with Free Practice 3, ahead of the first of the two Moto3 qualifying sessions at 12.35pm local time (6.35pm MYT).

John McPhee
10th (1’42.440)

Today has been a fairly productive day and we did a lot of laps on the hard tyre. In the end we spent the whole day on the hard tyre, as we planned to use the soft at the end of FP2 but with the rain we didn’t get that opportunity. I felt good with the used tyre and managed to find a good rhythm. It looks like there is quite a bit of time to be gained with the soft tyre. Overall I think we’ve done a solid job, improved the feeling and I’m looking forward to hopefully getting a time attack in tomorrow. Although I’m excited to ride in either the wet or dry – we always have fun in the wet conditions.