“Qualifying was good: 1m 24.8s in those temperatures was strong for the bike, and it felt good. I was happy with that. In the race, I was just a little bit out of my depth to be honest. It’s become quite apparent that the front group in the championship this year have got something more than us. But the racer in me just can’t accept that, so I just tried to push beyond the limit to keep in that lead group. It didn’t feel too bad out there to be honest, and sometimes you can get away with doing that, but on this occasion I just pushed the front too hard. We’re losing a lot of time coming off the corners which meant that I was trying to make up for it on the entry and couldn’t make it stick on that lap. It is what it is. It’s frustrating but we’ve just got to accept it. Being the top Honda at that point shows that we’re extracting the most out of the package, and if it is wet tomorrow that can be a bit more of a leveller. It can slow our competitors down and reduce the gap, which would be an interesting race for sure.”

“I’ve been enjoying it to be honest with you. Qualifying was a little bit frustrating, really, after just missing out on the Q2 session but the race wasn’t too bad. I was a bit frustrated that the group in front of us was able to get away a little bit and I feel like we had the pace that they had but we couldn’t reel them back in. But it’s a few more points on the board. The bike’s in one piece, so we’ll just keep learning as we go. It was nice to spend a whole race actually racing with people, passing each other, and now we’ll see what the weather holds tomorrow.”