John McPhee is having the time of his life at MotorLand Aragón despite the steep ‘but fun’ learning curve aboard the Petronas SRT Moto2.

The Scot will line up 29th on tomorrow’s grid after completing Q1 15th, with a best time of 1’53.475 and is visibly enjoying his promotion experience so far.

“Honestly, I'm having so much fun this weekend,” he said after qualifying. “It's been great. I feel like I'm just trying to absorb everything, there's so much information to gain. I've had a smile on my face all weekend.

“In the qualifying there, it's incredible the grip after the MotoGP with them first few laps and I was really trying to benefit from them. We've made good steps session by session, it seems to be the second session of both days we've taken over a second off our lap time and we're kind of in the window now. We're not so far away, so I’m really happy and looking forward to the race tomorrow.

“It's completely different,” he said, comparing the two classes. “Honestly, the bike is, obviously it's a lot heavier and more powerful that's obvious, but it's so stiff, and that's what I struggled with a little bit in the beginning, was getting the bike to work. Putting it through the stroke, really attacking, you have to attack so much to get the feedback but it's hard to get to that point because it's so stiff. Big, big learning curve but great fun.

“It's nice, it's nice. I've been riding around on a 1000cc so [the power’s] not scared me too much but yeah it's obviously a lot more than Moto3,” he continued. “Trying to control the spin on corner exit is the biggest thing to try and understand.

“There is so much data and information to digest, to try to help us improve on track in a short space of time but I’m really happy with the progress that we’ve made across the last two days. We’ve made some big steps forward and so far it’s been a successful weekend. If I can continue to chip away at the lap times, then I hope that I’m in a position to have a good race and fight with some strong guys tomorrow."