"It would not be good to say I am happy today because in qualifying we struggled a bit, but we certainly did improve the bike in race set-up," said the Italian. "We went a lot better on race tyres and I was in the top-five. The whole team has done a great job to find a good setting and we are confident that we have a good rhythm for tomorrow. Like I said yesterday, this track is not so easy with my arm, but I will certainly be giving it my best tomorrow and I think it will be a really interesting race and we could be right up there!"
Wild-card rider Ben Spies was using qualifying tyres for the first time in two years - it rained during his
MotoGP qualifying debut at
Donington Park - but adapted to the extra grip well.
The reigning AMA Superbike champion produced a lap within half-a-second of fourth on the grid, but due to the amazingly close times he will start from the fifth row in 13th place.
"It went good today overall, I haven't used qualifiers for a couple of years now and if I could have found a few more tenths I would have been a lot further forward, but I got blocked on a couple of my qualifying laps and made a mistake on my last one," said Spies. "It should be good for the race tomorrow as we've figured a few things out with the bike and we got down to a good time on the race tyres. The race set-up is certainly getting better and better and I am getting more comfortable on the bike every time I ride it, and I think I can get it in the top ten tomorrow."
"Loris and Ben have a bit of an uphill battle from the fourth and fifth rows respectively, this is all the more frustrating when two-tenths of a second would have put Loris fifth on the grid," said Denning. "It is so close from fifth backwards and I'm sure both the guys will be giving everything they've got over 32 laps tomorrow to do the team and themselves proud."
