Petronas Sprinta Racing’s John McPhee enjoyed a positive and productive first day of the Gran Premio dell’Emilia Romagna e della Riviera di Rimini, the second consecutive race at the Misano track, after two exceedingly fast-paced Moto3 sessions.

With the top lap times quicker than those set last weekend at Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, McPhee finished the day 15th in the combined timings, with a best lap of 1’42.445, having focused primarily on testing new settings rather than completing flying lap’s for the majority of Friday’s track time, thanks to his strong performance last-time-out.

Speaking after the session McPhee explained:

“Today has been a day for trying some new things because, with all the data gathered last weekend in the race, we had a good opportunity to experiment, as we already know that we have a good race setting.

“We tested a couple of things in FP1 and managed to find something that was better in one area, but not so much in another. Overall we did find something more for the future.

“FP2 we were back to the race set-up more or less and I focused on setting laps on my own, not with the group. I’m quite happy with this lap time and I know that tomorrow with more of a time attack we can be up where we need to be.

“Qualifying is something that we need to improve: I crashed on the second lap last time and I need to change my strategy a little bit. I’m looking forward to the session tomorrow because I know we can be up there, I would have been last week without the crash.”