Troy Corser is setting his sights on concluding his first World Superbike season with BMW on a high by securing the team's best result at the Portimao season finale.

The Australian will start eighth on the grid after shrugging off a slow start to the weekend to sneak into the Superpole shootout and battle it out for a spot on the front two rows.

Although a low-speed fall during the deciding session prevented Corser from getting any higher than eighth on the grid, he was happy with the rate of improvement between provisional qualifying and Superpole.

With that in mind, he wants to challenge the leaders and possibly improve upon his current best result of fifth position in the two races.

“Well that was quite a bit better than yesterday and a relief that I could actually push the bike harder without thinking I was going to come off,” he said. “It's hard to work out exactly what went wrong yesterday but in the end it might just have been a tyre problem.

“What is important though, is how we have worked hard to turn round yesterday's disappointment and end up almost on the front row of the grid. I'm not sure if we could've got a front row place today, because we had already used up our allocation of two qualifying tyres, but it shows how close we are.

“I'm pretty happy with my times on race rubber and having done about a fifteen lap stint, I have a fair idea of how the tyre is going to behave. It was quite a bit hotter today and that had some affect on the grip, but at least I am in a good position for tomorrow's races. I aim to make a couple of good starts, see how well I can fight with the leaders and try and come away with the best results of the year.”