Petronas Sprinta’s John McPhee overcame multiple distractions at the Sachsenring on Saturday, qualifying strongly in fourth place for the German GP.
Yellow flags, an intense heatwave and the much-publicised change in crew chief could all have derailed the Scot’s performance in Saxo ny this weekend, but he remained calm and dedicated as he set about securing his grid spot for Sunday’s 27-lap race.
Having already set the fastest time on Friday, McPhee headed straight to Q2 thanks to his 1’26.712 effort in FP3.
With one lap disallowed for exceeding track limits and the final push derailed due to yellow flags, the Scot’s 1’27.228 time, set on his penultimate revolution was still enough to see him head the second row for tomorrow’s contest.
“I’m feeling good and I’m really enjoying riding this Sachsenring circuit.
“We’ve been working session by session and lap by lap, to improve both the feeling and the lap time. We’ve also been able to do quite a lot of laps on both the hard and soft tyres.
“I felt like I had some more in the tank in qualifying, but the yellow flags came out so I wasn’t able to improve. The time we did was good enough for the second row and we know that it’s good enough to be in the fight in Moto3.
“I’m really looking forward to the race tomorrow. I think we’ll have a big group for the first laps, but there’s two or three of us who should be able to split the group up. Hopefully we’ll be in the fight come the final few laps.”
