John Hopkins and Chris Vermeulen finished the hour just 14th and 16th - and over two-seconds behind pole sitter Dani Pedrosa.

"That was an awful session and probably the worst for the team all season, it was ridiculous!" said Hopkins. "We did make some improvements this afternoon with the dry setting but we are still nowhere near close to what we want. I am very unhappy with the qualifying position, but I do have high hopes for the race as I know we can get a better set-up than we've had today!"

Team-mate and home hero Vermeulen, riding in a special Barry Sheene livery this weekend, was slightly more optimistic:

"We have improved the bike a long way today and have also consistently improved lap-times. We still have a long way to go and we especially need to concentrate on improving the corner speed and rear tyre durability. I'm sure we'll be a bit better for tomorrow and hope we'll get a dry warm-up to test those things out. I am far from happy with where I qualified and it gives me a lot of work to do right from the start, but I'm up for it and I'll be giving it everything I've got at my home GP!"

"A dismal qualifying result today!" stated team manager Paul Denning. "We had high hopes coming to this event that we would be able to take a good step in our performance here compared to our winter test, but that has just not been the case.

"Long term there are a number of factors we need to look at to try to understand our relative lack of performance at this circuit, but short-term the most important thing we can do right now is to maximise what we have in the garage right now, make sure the riders are ready to give 100% and try to salvage a decent result from what has been a difficult weekend," he added.