SRT’s Jake Dixon faced a difficult challenge at Le Mans today, as rapidly fluctuating track conditions and bike vibration hampered his qualifying performance.

The Brit was unfortunate to ended the day 26th overall after struggling to lift himself out of Q1, but will gain one place due to Somkiat Chantra’s six-place grid penalty.

Dixon’s Saturday didn’t get off to the best starts as a technical issue with the Petronas machine’s IMU forced his Triumph engine to shut-off, immediately prevented him from riding in the first 10 minutes of FP3 as his crew got to work. Once fixed, the Brit waited patiently as the Bugatti circuit dried in a bid to claim a Q2 place. Although he completed the morning session sixth fastest, his 1’39.030 lap was not an improvement on yesterday afternoon’s dry pace and the 25-year old was left facing the Q1 battle.

A dry start to qualifying allowed Dixon to set a time that placed him provisionally in the promotion zone for Q2, however, bad vibrations from his bike ultimately prevented him from putting together a lap time that would see him through. His 1’37.564 fastest placed him 12th in the session and 26th overall with Dixon lining up 25th on Sunday’s grid thanks to Chantra’s sanction for crashing whilst not respecting a yellow flag during FP2. 

“We went back to last year’s set up in FP3, to try to understand why my pace isn’t what we expect it to be,” Dixon explained from Le Mans. 

"It felt better, but come qualifying I was suffering from some bad vibration, for some unknown reason. It meant I wasn’t able to make a decent lap time. 

“It’s not an ideal situation to be in and it’s definitely not the position I wanted to be in. I’m trying everything I can to keep getting back up every time I get knocked down. 

“It’s going to be tough to make my way through the field tomorrow, but I’m just going to play it by ear and see what happens in the race.”