“I definitely have to say thanks to the team because we made quite a lot of progress straight away this morning and I felt a lot more comfortable on the bike.

I’m not completely thrilled with my second qualifying lap though. My first two splits were quite good but then I made a little mistake and in the last part of the lap I didn’t put it together clean enough. I really didn’t improve my time from my first qualifier to my second one and with these boys that won’t cut it.

Nevertheless I’m happy to be on the front row - that’s four in a row - and the bike, tyres and everything is working pretty well so I’m excited for the race. I know it’s going to be difficult tomorrow because there are a lot of guys going quickly but hopefully we’ve got a package that we can do something with. This afternoon I was able to put in some decent laps on a used race tyre so I’m excited for the race.”