Leon Camier has praised his Airwaves Yamaha R1 after qualifying on pole position for the latest round of the ViSK.com British Superbike Championship at Mallory Park.

Camier's weekend had been beset with problems throughout free practice, his lead bike suffering technical issues in second and third free practice, leaving him well down the field with barely any track time.

Nonetheless, the championship leader was back on form during the qualifying phases as he took the fight to Tommy Hill, the dominant force of the Mallory Park weekend thus far, eventually snatching pole position with a time of 56.016secs.

For Camier, the fact he was able to record pole position on a bike that had completed only a fraction of the laps of his rivals is testament to its strength.

"The last few years at Mallory Park have been horrendous for me. I've had issue after issue and a run of bad results. I thought this weekend was going the same way. We had problems with my number one bike up until qualifying which reduced our track time.

“To then qualify on pole just shows what a fantastic package the Airwaves Yamaha YZF-R1 is. Tommy Hill has been awesome all weekend. I'll need to get away well and really get my head down in the races tomorrow. It's going to be close out there."

Things were less positive for team-mate James Ellison, who had been threatening a spot on the front row during practice. However, he will start in seventh position after experiencing problems changing direction.

“I've been struggling all year on the Airwaves Yamaha with direction change. As Mallory Park has so many chicanes, it became the perfect place to try and solve it. I'm really pleased as we've seen in the data that I've improved the speed in which I'm now changing direction.

“The only problem is that it's affected the traction on the rear. We've got a couple of adjustments to try in warm-up to see if we can now get the best of both worlds."