Petronas Sprinta Moto3 title contender John McPhee found good pace on used tyres during the opening free practices in Qatar and can now concentrate on outright speed to ensure a place in qualifying two tomorrow.

The Oban rider used soft tyres on his Honda NSF250RW this afternoon as the temperatures were lower and conditions more representative of what they will face in the race on Sunday.

McPhee was immediately quick and soon set times that were quicker than the fastest lap in FP1. At the end of the second practice the Scot had managed a best lap time of 2'05.383secs, which placed him 11th in the combined standings across the two sessions.

"The pace is decent, especially with the used tyre, so I’m feeling good. I did my lap with the soft tyre alone so there’s still quite a bit of time there to be made with a tow and a slipstream," said McPhee.

"With the lap time I’d hoped to be a little bit further up the grid but there’s a lot of guys putting really fast times in so we’ll see how FP3 goes tomorrow, but the main focus is to get into Q2.

"The last few days there’s been a bit of a sandstorm so I thought FP1 would be more or less a write off, but in the end it was quite decent. The lap times towards the end of the session were quite fast and in FP2 were a lot faster than what we’d expected.

"Of course testing is important but it’s so nice to get away from that and actually now focus on a race weekend. I’m really looking forward to Sunday."