John McGuinness and the SMT Honda team were left to rue what might have been at Sunday's Macau Grand Prix when the Morecambe rider finished in sixth place in the shortened ten-lap race. Having qualified in second around the 3.8-mile Guia circuit, McGuinness was hoping to challenge for the race win on the Roadhouse-liveried Honda but tyre problems saw him slip gradually through the pack and he had to accept sixth place, some 14 seconds adrift of race winner Michael Rutter.
It was a problematical week at the Chinese colony with unseasonal weather conditions seeing heavy rain, which resulted in numerous delays to the schedule. The action got underway with free practice on Thursday morning and a solid session saw John ease his way back in around the demanding armco-lined venue with the sixth fastest time but the rain then began to fall and the afternoon's opening qualifying session was then cancelled with Friday following a similar pattern.
That meant that qualifying was pushed back to Saturday and limited to a single one-hour session. With track conditions far from ideal, John utilised all his experience of Macau to post the second fastest lap with a time of 2m26.951s although he was plagued by traffic during the session and wasn't able to get as close to pole man Rutter as he would have liked. Nevertheless, both he and the team were feeling confident going into the race, which was pushed back a day to Sunday and cut from 15 laps to 10.
Despite oil and sand on a number of the fast corners, due to a car incident, the race went ahead and a good start saw John in third place as the pack headed through the 170mph Mandarin Corner. A smart overtaking manoeuvre on Rutter at the following Lisboa Bend enabled him to move up to second but that was as good as it got and, pushed back to fourth by the end of the second lap, he was already experiencing a lack of grip, something that worsened as the race wore on. Indeed, he slipped back into the clutches of Jeremy Toye and Gary Johnson and could only watch as they swept by although he did hold on to sixth place at the chequered flag.
"It hasn't been the easiest of weeks for anyone and although I was second on the grid, it wasn't as quick as I would have liked due the traffic and the fact that each time I got close, Michael went quicker. Everyone was in the same boat and the lack of track time meant we struggled a bit for set-up although I was happy with what I was running and we felt confident of challenging for a podium, at least," said McGuinness.
"The first couple of laps of the race went well and, with a good start, I was hanging right in there with the front pack. I did what I wanted by getting past Michael early on but, unfortunately, I was running into tyre problems as early as the second lap. I'd slipped back to fourth by then and simply couldn't run the pace of the front three so much so that Toye and Johnson were soon right on my tail. I was powerless to do anything when they came by and after qualifying second, sixth place isn't what me, nor the team, came here for. It's really disappointing to be honest and I don't seem to be having much luck round here at the moment but it's a finish and we'll have to come back stronger next year."
