John McPhee ends first day of Andalucia GP ninth, topping FP2

 In Moto3, News

Only five days since the Spanish GP, PETRONAS Sprinta Racing’s Moto3 riders John McPhee and Khairul Idham Pawi were back out in the Spanish heat at the Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto today, where they battled track temperatures as high as 52C to finish ninth and 23rd respectively across the two free practice sessions.

After the heartache of last Sunday, McPhee comes into this weekend eager to make amends. The Scot has started the Gran Premio de Andalucía weekend strong after topping the times in the blistering heat of FP2 with a 1min 46.560secs lap. Running on old tyres the pace shown by McPhee was impressive, however with the increased temperatures meant that he was unable to improve on his FP1 lap of 1min 46.387secs and he ended the day ninth in the combined times.

Team-mate KIP’s focus was on improving his feeling aboard the Honda NSF250RW and making further progress in his return to racing. The first session of the day saw the Malaysian running as high as tenth for the majority of the session. While others set flying laps, KIP continued to work on race pace and finished the session 22nd with a lap time of 1min 47.211secs. KIP continued to make improvements throughout the second session of the day and finished 19th with a 1min 47.590secs time. KIP’s best time from FP1 saw him finish the day 23rd across the two sessions.

The PETRONAS Sprinta Racing Moto3 pair will be back out on track for Free Practice 3 tomorrow at 9am local time (3pm MYT), before qualifying gets underway at 12.35pm local time (6.35pm MYT).

John McPhee
9th (1’46.387)

We started FP1 more or less with the same bike as the last race, but with one or two different things to try. We evaluated some different options and managed to find a good compromise, although the solution we tried in FP1 was not necessarily the best option. For FP2 we put what we learned into place, we went with more or less the same tyres from FP1 and managed to do a good lap time, especially in these temperatures. It’s been a productive day overall and I’m looking forward to FP3 and of course qualifying tomorrow. I think we have the speed to be on the front row. In the end we’ve seen that I was on the front row last weekend and on the first lap I ended up P10, so it’s not a disaster if we don’t. Of course it’s nice to be there on the front and it’s always our target to be on the front two rows. We will dig deep tomorrow in qualifying and see where we are: it’s nice to be back here!

Khairul Idham Pawi
23rd (1’47.211)

Today I’m happy with the bike and the feeling is getting better: the bike is feeling good to ride. The front feels a lot better compared to last week and the lap time in these hot conditions is better too. We have improved the time a lot today. There are still a few things I need to improve. I was making progress in the final lap of FP2 but I was too close to some other riders to finish it as fast as I wanted. I want to try and push in FP3 to go directly into Q2, I will be trying my best to achieve this.

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