Cold start for McPhee and KIP

2020-10-17 10:31
A cold MotorLand Aragón came alive with the sound of Moto3 bikes, as the first of two back-to-back races at the circuit got underway for PETRONAS Sprinta Racing at the Aragon GP today. John McPhee ended the day 15th while team-mate Khairul Idham Pawi was 29th.

The cold conditions experienced in the opening Free Practice session didn’t hamper McPhee, who was at the sharp end of the timings throughout FP1. The Scot set a best time of 2mins 0.316secs, which placed him third. Although the track temperature had risen, John focused on a long run at the beginning of the afternoon session. After struggling to set a clear lap, due to traffic, he finished FP2 and the day overall, 15th with a 1min 59.317secs lap time.

Team-mate KIP made a steady start to FP1, taking the time to get used to the cold track conditions. The Malaysian was able to improve his lap times throughout the session, finishing the 40 minutes 24th with a 2mins 2.434secs lap. In FP2 KIP was quick to improve upon his times from the morning session, however front-end chatter kept him from improving further. His best time of 2mins 0.868secs placed him 29th in the session, and overall.

McPhee and KIP will be next on track tomorrow at 9.30am local time (3.30pm MYT) for FP3, before qualifying gets underway at 12.35pm local time (6.35pm MYT).






John McPhee
15th (1'59.317)





The feeling isn’t too bad. I did quite a long run in FP2, so that we could see how the tyre managed at this circuit. It’s pretty much the only session that we can do this in here and during the long run I felt strong. For my flying lap I didn’t plan to go in the group, but I ended up right in the middle of it and had to fight with other riders. This made it difficult to get a clear lap, but we know the speed is there. It will be tricky tomorrow morning to go faster, but I feel like we have the pace to go through to Q2 anyway. The position wasn’t what we wanted today, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

Source: SIC Racing Team

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