Barcelona battle comes to an early end for McPhee

2020-09-30 12:21
Despite a strong start and battling at the sharp end, John McPhee’s Catalan GP came to an early end after a Turn 4 crash on lap five. PETRONAS Sprinta Racing team-mate Khairul Idham Pawi also had a difficult day at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, finishing 24th.

A strong start from McPhee saw him move up into ninth on the first lap. Setting fastest laps early on, the Scot soon moved up into the top three and was fighting at the sharp end during the opening laps. Unfortunately John’s race came to an early end at Turn 4 on lap five, after he lost the front end braking to avoid another rider. However, McPhee maintains his third place in the championship standings.

It was also a difficult race for team-mate KIP, who continued to struggle with the same rear-end issues that plagued the Malaysian in qualifying yesterday. Despite battling hard aboard his Honda NSF250RW, KIP was unable to make progress through the field and, at the end of the 21 laps, crossed the finish line 24th.

McPhee and KIP will now be able to enjoy a week break, before the next triple-header kicks off with the Grand Prix de France at Le Mans (9-11 October).






Johan Stigefelt
Team Director





It wasn’t really the race we were looking for, but it’s a racing incident. Unfortunately John made a mistake, not intentionally. He felt strong, so it feels even worse because he was looking good in the race. He had a good start, good first laps and we knew he could be there on the podium today. We’re sorry for [Albert] Arenas and his team, it was not on purpose. It has been an up and down weekend, but I was really happy with the race until this incident. We now need to look forward to Le Mans and do better there.

We need to do what we have to do with KIP, because it isn’t where we want to be. We need to be making steps forward and we haven’t been able to do this. We have a good team, a strong team in Moto3, and it’s hard to see the results not reflecting this. We will sit down and work out what we need to do before the next race to improve.

Source: SIC Racing Team

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