A difficult weekend at Misano concluded in a 10th place finish for Petronas Sprinta Racing’s John McPhee, after a fight through the pack from 19th on the grid was subverted in the closing stages.

The Scotsman’s six-point tally from this morning’s second Rimini outing, however, maintains his third place in the Moto3 championship standings.

Gaining a position before the race started due to Tatsuki Suzuki’s withdrawal - a broken wrist the result of a violent highside late on in Saturday’s qualifying - McPhee had to work hard to progress through the determined pack, joining the fast-paced leading group with ten laps to go.

Forced wide with two laps to go, the 23-year-old was prevented from challenging for the podium as he fell down the order, finally crossing the line 10th but maintaining his championship position with 98 points, 19 behind Ai Ogura in second and 21 from leader Albert Arenas.

“Of course you need to look at the positives from this weekend, which is that we managed to climb from P19 forward to, at one moment, P7," said McPhee.

“Honestly it was a tough race, coming from P19 was never going to be easy and it was made harder with the race speeds being so much faster than last week. Everybody managed to find nearly one second per lap.

“It was much more difficult to make my way forward but I felt good on the bike. When I got to around P7 or P8 there were a couple of riders who upset the rhythm, and I was unlucky to get ran wide because we had a chance at the top five today.

We’re still third in the championship, not so far from the leader, and there’s still a good amount of races to go.”