San Carlo Honda's Alvaro Bautista has praised the crew which 'gave 100 per cent and more' for the bike which enabled him to collect his first ever MotoGP pole position at Silverstone this afternoon.

The Spaniard, who hasn't been on the front row since Phillip Island last year, took great pains to point out the lap was the resilt of a lot of effort from his team and not the result of a tow from a quicker rider.

This pole position hasn't happened by coincidence – it is the fruit of a lot of hard work from all the guys who have all been giving 100% and sometimes a little more. The conditions today were strange and difficult but we managed to find a good setting, I was up front for the whole session and set my fastest lap on my own," said Bautista.

"It started to rain for the last few minutes and nobody was able to improve their time, but I still had a fresh tyre to use and made a couple of mistakes on my best lap so I could have gone faster too. Tomorrow I start on pole and have a good race pace so hopefully we can convert it into a good result.”