WorldSBK Phillip Island: ‘Unprepared’ McPhee podiums on debut

Vince64’s John McPhee celebrated a sensational maiden WorldSSP podium on his debut race in the class at Phillip Island on Saturday afternoon.

Having a bike with no ride-by wire or electronics set-up to make his throttle blipper work properly, added to a serious case of intestinal infection in the run-up to race weekend, was hardly ideal preparation for his first ever Supersport World Championship race, but Kawasaki rider McPhee showed why he is a multiple Moto3 race winner in the opening action in Australia. He had been 20th on the grid for a race he would ultimately finish third in.

In an eventual ten lap ‘real’ race, after one main aborted race ‘result’ saw him ride to a front row position on the grid, his wise choice of full rain tyres saw him beat everyone except the factory Aruba Ducati of Nicolo Bulega and the fast finishing Yamaha VFT rider Nicholas Spinelli. However, it wasn’t as much of a clear decision as initially assumed.

“Funny story actually,” McPhee admitted from the Phillip Island paddock. “So I said to them, ‘keep the slicks’ then I thought ‘Okay, it’s only ten laps, it’s not going to be long enough to come dry’. Maybe if it was a 20 or 18 lap race, the slick would have been the correct choice but I said ‘Okay, it’s only ten laps, put the rain tyres’. Then when the mechanics left the grid, I looked around and seen some riders have intermediate - I didn’t even know that it was such a thing because in the past I’ve only used slick or rain. So then I started to panic thinking ‘intermediate would have been the tyre of choice I think but let’s go with it anyway’. The rain was the one that paid off because I think five laps from the end there was another dump and that that helped us a lot.”

Amazingly, in a