Petronas Sprinta Racing’s John McPhee was back from battling the flu and ready to run at the front in Moto3’s Algarve GP practice.

Choosing to work on set up and race pace rather than attack the times, McPhee completed Friday’s two sessions 16th overall - thanks to his 1’49.157 lap time set in FP1 - and just outside the provisional promotion places for Saturday’s all-important Q2 shootout. The Scot, however, is aware of his qualifying target and set to push in FP3.

“After having the flu at Misano, I was able to rest for a few days and I feel like I’m back at full fitness now,” McPhee said after Friday practice. “We haven’t really worked on our one lap pace today, so it’s something that we will need to work on in FP3 and make sure that we can go straight through to Q2.

"For this track the front three rows are the target in qualifying because then on race day we know that we can be in the fight at the front.”