Petronas Sprinta Racing’s Jake Dixon fell foul of tricky conditions at Misano on Saturday after rain fell at the end of Moto2’s Q1 leaving him 20th.

After a strong start to FP3 saw Dixon inside the top 10 as Saturday action got going, the Brit was unfortunate to miss out on a Q2 place by just 0.005secs by the close of the morning’s 40-minute session.

Showing good speed late on, with a 1’37.870 lap, a crash in the final two minutes ended his session at turn four and while almost holding on to his Q2 promotion, he was demoted to 15th at the flag.

The 25-year-old started qualifying in fourth after the opening lap, a position he held with his second 1’38.769 attempt before slipping to sixth as the pace increased. With rain falling in the final moments, improvements became impossible with Dixon left facing a 20th place start for tomorrow’s 25-lap race.
 
“Unfortunately I made a small error towards the end of FP3 and crashed,” Dixon admitted on Saturday. “Up until that point I felt like I had good pace in the dry and I feel like we could have been between fifth and tenth in that session.

“We had difficult conditions in Q1 with the rain starting to fall and I wanted to get my head down early, in case it started getting heavier. I only had one person in front of me on my fast lap, which meant I couldn’t gauge where the damp parts of the circuit were and I got held up.

“It’s a shame because I thought we could have been on the front three rows, based on our dry pace. Tomorrow I’ll need to get my head down in the first few laps, but I think we have good race pace and if I can finish in the top 10 then it will be a good day.”