“This weekend, even though we haven’t put in the one quick lap in every session, we’ve quietly been reasonably close to the pace and perhaps a bit better than it looked on paper.

This afternoon the warmer temperature helped us, the tyres worked better and straight away we were able to get down into those 1m 58s laps where we need to be. I quite enjoyed my qualifying laps. My first run went pretty well and on my second one I hung it out a little bit further and was able to go a couple of tenths faster – it was fun.

For the afternoon session we changed the bike geometry around which seemed to help us. We’ll see what happens in the race tomorrow, but nonetheless that’s my first front row of the season so I’ll try to get a good start and turn it into a good result.”