Leon Camier’s (MV Agusta Reparto Corse) 2017 got off to a difficult start at Phillip Island Grand Prix circuit in Friday’s free practice, as he was forced to miss most of FP1 with an engine problem; however he remains positive ahead of the race.

Under cloudy skies at the Yamaha Finance Australian Round, Camier suffered an engine problem in the opening ten minutes of the session, which led to the red flags being waved due to the oil left on the track by his Italian machine. Unable to put in any more laps for the rest of the morning, his team worked relentlessly to improve the problem. He was hopeful to go out on track for the free practise session, but it was to no avail as the bike works on being prepared for the all important Tissot Superpole and Race One.

Despite this big setback, the British rider ended the day with the 13^th fastest time – a 1.31.405 meaning he narrowly missed out on an automatic spot in Superpole 2.

“To be honest technically I don’t know what’s wrong,” Explained Camier. “We had a few problems after two laps, so it’s a little bit frustrating. I leaked oil everywhere and I was lucky to not have gone down. Fingers crossed they can get the bike ready for tomorrow and that there’s no specific problems which mean we can’t race. Fingers crossed we haven’t lost an engine.

We did a lot of work with the electronics and we are trying to move forward with that, but the base of the bike is really good. The lap I did this morning was not perfect by a long way but the lap time was still pretty good, so I’m pretty happy for this. At the same time we need more laps with the race tyre, we haven’t tried all the race tyres yet, so we don’t know if they’d be any good or not. The race is 100% going to be a gamble.

The goal is to do the best we can and play it by here. If I can get through into Superpole 2 then perfect, I  just try my best and as we said, I think we’ve got a good package.”

Camier will hope to be out on track in time for Free Practise 3 on Saturday morning, with the opening session beginning at 10.20AM LT (+11 GMT) at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.