Pata Honda's Leon Haslam has deemed his Phillip Island Superpole performance as a disaster after struggling with two qualifying tyres and experiencing a misfire which he thought the team had ironed out.

The Derbyshire man thought he had been on the end of a duff Pirelli in the second Superpole session and switched to a race tyre but the same happened again in the final period so he had to settle for a third-row start.

"Superpole was a bit of a disaster, actually. We had a few issues in Superpole 1 and didn’t quite get it sorted. In Superpole 2 we had a misfire problem but managed to solve it and get out on a race tyre with about a minute to go, which just got me through," said Haslam.

"The qualifier just didn’t work but we thought it might have been a bad one so went out for Superpole 3 on the second one, but it was exactly the same. I was slower on the Q but all I had left was an old race tyre and that’s what I had to do the lap on. I was quite happy with that but disappointed with the other problems.

"We were trying something new with traction control in free practice and it kind of low-sided me off which was really strange. We lost most of that session so missed some track time when we wanted to try some things, but I’m not too worried. The feeling’s good, we just haven’t tested everything that we wanted."