On Saturday morning we never really improved the bike but I was getting to grips with the circuit more and more and trying different things to see what works best. My section times were all more or less ok apart from T2 with that long left. That was where I was losing my lap and nothing that I tried on the bike or anything that we tried with the setting was making much difference. I went 0.1secs faster than I did on Friday and ended up 16th.
In the afternoon I knew that I would need to do at least a mid-1.59 and even better a low 1min 59 to get a decent qualifying. The bike was more or less okay, that left hander was still killing me but I had to deal with it. With 15-minutes to go I did a 1min 59.7secs which was enough for 16th at the time.
For the last 10 minutes I came in for a new front tyre. Strangely, the fronts were behaving like in Qatar and tearing up on the left side more than the rears were. It is normally totally the opposite, especially in Europe where the rear's normally do 5 good laps and then go off, while the fronts stay strong. It was a problem that everybody was having and I knew people were going to suffer with it in the race.
I abandoned my first flying lap midway through because I wanted somebody to follow and tow off but I didn’t find anybody. Then on my second lap I came up on one of the Yamaha riders which scrapped my lap, but I kept my head down so that I would be in front of him for the next lap.
I passed a huge group at the end of the lap which had Dovisioso and Takahashi in it so I was hoping that they would pass me early in the lap and I could follow them for the lap.
I braked slightly earlier than normal into the 1st corner and let Dovisioso through but he went wide and backed off which was a bit annoying because that would have been an ideal person to follow. It also messed my lap a little bit but it wasn’t completely gone.
