Petronas’ Jake Dixon was pleased with the progress made at Portimao before a mid-race fall at turn eight cut his Portuguese GP short.

The Brit had a tough ask this weekend, learning the notoriously tricky rollercoaster layout having missed last year’s race due to injury. Having qualified in 14th he launched his SRT machine to a strong start, gaining two places during the opening lap and continuing to make good progress throughout the first half of the 23-lap race.

Braking into the top-10 on lap 5, the 24-year-old was riding as high as eighth for the ensuing laps before bad luck struck on lap 15. Running wide into turn seven, Dixon was unfortunate to crash at turn eight bringing his first PortugueseGP to an early conclusion, with nine laps left to go.

“It’s been a difficult weekend for me learning a new track” Dixon explained this afternoon. “In the race I was making a good recovery, going from 14th to eighth and actually running in eighth for a long time.

“It was unfortunate to go down when I did because I’d completed a lot of laps, had accrued a lot of information and was riding well within my ability. I just ran a tiny bit wide into turn seven, then going into turn eight I was on the raised curb and went down. I’m gutted for the team because I felt like we were making good progress but I’m looking forward to getting to Jerez.”

“I’m disappointed because our goal with Jake was to finish the race, which we didn’t do” Petronas SRT boss, Johan Stigefelt added. “It was important to make a good race today and finish it, to gain some experience. He did really well though and was P8 for a time, we were super happy with that. It’s just a shame we had the crash, fortunately he’s not injured, but we’ll move on to Jerez, which is a track we know and I think we can be fast.”