New signing Walker was fourth after the morning’s free practice session, with team-mate Corser just 0.3 seconds and one position back in fifth. On a chilly day, with gusting winds increasing and track temperatures dropping in the afternoon, the FPR boys finished the first day of qualifying in ninth and seventh respectively. Their best times, however, were set on Pirelli race tyres whereas the rest of the field sliced substantial chunks off their fastest laps on qualifying rubber.

Troy finished with a best lap of 1m37.254 while Chris, on his number two bike, posted a 1m37.718 in the morning session, just one tenth of a second behind his best lap on the FP1 at this circuit.

Troy said: “We have not really been trying race tyres today as we found the best one straight away for both front and rear. But the rest of the leading times in the afternoon session were set when people were taking about a second off on qualifiers. I wasn’t able to go any quicker on a qualifier as it produced more chatter. And it’s important to qualify well here because, with turn one so tight, if you are not up there with the first three or four by turn two, you are never going to catch them. So that is a worry. But, if you look at the times before the qualifiers were used, I was around third or fourth. I have been changing the pivot position in the rear and trying a different rear shock to try and get more grip from the rear, but that is always a balancing act between creating more chatter.”

Chris said: “Today went relatively well and I was happy with my times this morning, especially to be within a tenth of my best time from the test so quickly. In the afternoon I had to swap bikes because of a technical problem and the second bike had different forks and a different set-up, which was not ideal. So I didn’t use a qualifier because I wanted to save my tyre quote until tomorrow when the weather will hopefully be better. Sure, I’m used to being a little bit higher up the board but I hope to be up there tomorrow. My biggest problem has been with ground clearance, which is something we will have to work on for tomorrow.”