Jake Dixon experienced a difficult first day at the Aragon GP after bitterly cold temperatures, morning delays and ill-suited set-up decisions all hampered the Brit’s previous stellar progress on his Moto2 machine.

Thanks to the cold track conditions at the beginning of the morning session, Dixon bided his time before setting his fast laps, entering the top-four with just five minutes of action remaining and ending FP1 sixth with a best lap of 1’53.753.

A lunchtime set-up change saw the Petronas rider struggle to make the progress needed to significantly improve his time in FP2, the bad feeling preventing him from bettering his 1’53.538 lap time and concluding the day in the final provisional Q2 position, of 14th overall.

“This morning was not so bad: I felt good on the bike, but we needed to change a few things," said Dixon.

“This afternoon we changed some things on the bike, but it did not feel good. We need to put our heads together tonight and understand what direction we need to be going in here, because I couldn’t put the lap together like I wanted during FP2.

“It’s not ideal but we’ll analyse the data and I know the team will do a good job. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll be in a better position than we were today and I’m looking at going straight through to Q2 again tomorrow.”