“This morning in the cooler temperatures I was able to go a lot faster than this afternoon so we definitely need to come up with some adjustments to improve our speed in the hot conditions.

Sixth on the grid is ok, although it hasn’t exactly been the best day for us. My qualifying lap wasn’t perfect and, like at Phillip Island last week, in the last sector of the lap the tyre went a little bit soft. Nonetheless, I was able to move up the field on qualifiers and getting on the second row here is ok. The main thing we have to decide is which race tyre to run with because the track changed so much this afternoon when the temperature came up.

The surface was really hot and greasy, it was quite difficult for me to find enough grip and my rhythm was not so good. We got a decent qualifying position to give ourselves a chance - now we’ve got to improve the settings in race trim. It’s going to be really important to get a good start tomorrow and latch onto the front guys.”