John McPhee arrived in Portimao ready to race but unfortunately for the Sterilgarda Husqvarna rider, official medics had other ideas.

McPhee only has one Moto3 race under his belt for 2022 after a training accident between Qatar and Indonesia left him with fractured vertebrae. Having spent the past month rehabbing hard in a bit to be back on track at the Algarve International Circuit for the Portuguese GP, the Scot was not only told that would not be the case but that he had four, not two, fractures to fully repair.

“Obviously extremely disappointed not to be out there on track,” McPhee said from pitlane in Portugal on Friday. "I've had some intense physio trying to get myself back as soon as I possibly could and honestly from my side I feel not so bad.

“Of course there's some pain there, there’s a normal pain there but my target was to be back in Texas already,” he continued. “I've been working really closely with a couple of doctors in Spain and they kind of said to me, 'Look, Texas isn't going to be an option. It's a little bit too fast but if we do the sensible thing, we'll wait an extra three weeks, Portimao, 100 per cent you can be there.' We arrived yesterday. It was so nice to see the team again and get everything prepared for the weekend but unfortunately, the doctors looked at it here and they weren't happy with what they've seen and I totally respect their decision.

“It's hard as a rider not to be out there, especially when I say I feel not so bad. I'm not 100 per cent, that's clear, but I feel like I could definitely ride but yeah, I definitely respect their decision.

"It's a serious injury, obviously. Where it is on the vertebrae it could be bad if I was to have another incident so I'll take the decision on the chin and keep working hard now over the next couple of weeks with the focus to be back in La Mans as strong as we possibly can be.

“After the incident, I walked back to my van, I got myself dressed and I was more or less okay,” he explained. “But actually yesterday they said there's actually two more that have small cracks in them. So it's four in total that I've damaged.

“The two main ones have been kind of crushed, they've lost kind of 40 per cent of their height. It's strange. As a child, I always thought an injury like that is the worst possible thing, but it's honestly not been so bad. I've been really, really strict with my physio, with the recovery. Spent the first ten days, probably eight hours a day in the clinic in Girona. Just done absolutely everything I possibly could, from my diet to the physio, anything I could do, I've been doing it. That's why I feel like the recovery has went really well but yeah, we just need that little bit more time to make it 100 per cent safe to get back racing.

“Obviously it's frustrating, for every rider it's what we live for, what we train for, we always are looking forward to that next race so yeah, as a rider when you have your mind set on something it's then hard to have a knock back but it is the nature of the sport.

“My focus now is La Mans. I've already been thinking about Le Mans in my head, thinking about what we're going to do to be there as strong as we possibly can. It's a track that's been good to me in the past. So all I can do is turn up at the next one, even after missing the next two, 15 rounds to go and I can just aim to be there, fighting for race wins in every race. If we can do that, anything's possible. That's the target from now, we will focus on that and come back strong.”