Britain’s John McPhee and Danny Kent got their Moto3 campaigns off to a point-scoring start at Qatar with the Scotsman netting 11th place and England’s Kent two places further back under the floodlights of Qatar.
The pair started brightly with Kent’s Huqvarna-badged KTM running third in the opening laps and McPhee’s Honda able to shove up to sixth early on but the massively-hot early pace set by Jack Miller and Alex Marquez proved to be too much and they slowly slipped back.
McPhee managed to set a good rhythm but began to develop chatter which got progressively worse as the race went on, so he had to settle for 11th place.
“I started well but I’m not sure if the track conditions changed or something as we got some chatter from the rear. I managed to work with it but as the race went on, I started to make some more mistakes because of it and it was hard to keep up the speed. Overall, I’m happy with 11th from the first race and it’s nice to score some points,” said McPhee.
Kent was pushed wide by another rider and then found it difficult to get back into the race: “We had a good start and I got beaten up in the early laps. I got pushed wide into the first corner and lost the tow. With this long straight, if I passed someone, they got straight back. We’ve got a two-week break so I can go home and do some work.”
Australian Miller won the race by two-tenths of a second from Marquez while McPhee’s team-mate Efren Vasquez snuck through the pack to take the final podium spot with a late charge while Portugal’s Miguel Oliveira and Alex Rins completed the top five.
