“After the weekend we were having and how we felt after qualifying yesterday, it was a shame to see it rain this morning, but the weather is what it is. I went out in the warm-up this morning and it didn’t feel too bad - I was fifth fastest in really wet conditions.

But as soon as we started the race, basically after one lap we’re not sure what happened - whether it was the tyre or something electronic — but the bike became very difficult to ride and I just went backwards.

I think I was the first one to come in and the track was still pretty wet but I needed to come in and switch bikes. Luckily for me the track started to dry pretty fast and after a few slow laps I was able to get rolling.

Really I think we’re lucky to salvage some kind of result out of the day — if it had stayed wet we could have been in even more trouble. But ninth position for Honda’s home race is not the result we’d hoped for.

It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been on cut slicks — I’ve been in rain tyres or intermediates before — so I did get some useful experience.

We’ve still got three more races and we’ll keep fighting. Lastly, congratulations to Casey. There’s a new World Champion today and so congratulations to him and his whole team — they truly deserve it.”