"On Saturday morning the changes we made overnight had again improved the bike and the chassis was starting to feel really good. I did a lot of laps at the end of the session which were very consistent and also had a lot of blue helmets up on a number of different laps but didn’t piece them all together in one lap so I knew I could get things pretty good for the afternoon. I was 12th in the morning and 0.3 faster than I had been the day before.
"For the first part of the final qualifying session on Saturday afternoon we more or less had completely ironed out every problem The chassis was feeling the best it had been in a long time. Its good when a bike feels like that because it feels like you can do what you want on it and it doesn’t feel like anywhere near the limit. It was turning well, holding the line well, stable on the brakes and stable when hard on the gas and I had a tiny bit of chattering but nothing to serious.
"Within 5 laps of the session I had gone faster than I had gone all weekend on a 1.35.7 on an old rear tyre from the morning session. I went out with fresh rubber on the rear and on my 4th lap did a 1.35.1 and then two laps later a 1.35.0 and was up to 9th. For the last push I stopped in the box in the last 10-minutes and got another new tyre on the rear.
"On my second lap I did another 1.35.0 and the lap didn’t really feel anything special. On my last two laps I did a 1.35.8 being stuck behind a wild-card and then on my last lap did a 1.35.2. I felt like I could do 1.35s lap in lap out which was good for the race.
"I got bumped back to 10th at the very end of the session but it was still my best qualifying so far in GPs and the best thing was, I knew my set-up was pretty good for the race. The team were very happy because Stiggy was also going well and was 12th on the grid, so both of us were on the third row which was a first for this year. I still had a problem with my gear change, but my engine was again strong and had a good controllable feel.
