McAMS Yamaha’s Michael Laverty was pleasantly surprised with the pace of his R1 on the hard-option tyres at Donington Park, particularly as in previous years it has favoured the softer SC0 offered by Pirelli.

In 2015, champion Josh Brookes almost exclusively used the SC0 on his R1 and was able to lap at the end of a race almost as fast as he did at the beginning, so Laverty was happy to be able to put in mid-1’29s on the SC1 knowing that in the future the softer rear would give another couple of tenths so long as they can make it last.

“We felt that the soft tyre was wearing well in Spain and the fact the Yamaha works well on it that we should use it. You can put the soft rear in and it fixes a lot of your problems but I had excessive wear in Friday practice, getting about six or seven laps before it started to look average,” Laverty told BSN.

“I thought I would be able to do a full run with the hard tyre and I was really happy with it, the bike worked well. I said to PJ (Pete Jennings, crew chief) after warm-up that it would run 20 laps but I wouldn’t be fast enough to get a grid position for race two.

“As it turned out, I was able to do mid-1’29s and get on the front row for race two, so the pace is there too with the hard tyre. If we can run that pace with the hard, the soft is worth at least another couple of tenths.

“With the fundamentals in place, we can go to Brands Indy and work on life with the soft tyre to try and make that last - that should really get us into the pointy end.”

Laverty and team-mate James Ellison both suffered with engine brake strategy problems at Donington but the Irishman feels that they are now most of the way to fixing them and the bike will be a lot stronger from Brands onwards.

“I said from day one the potential is huge. The bike feels like a proper race bike that does everything you want. Every change you make illicits a response and you immediately get a direction and you know if you’re going the right way.

“The chassis is responsive and a lot of it comes down to the engine. Even in the rain, it feels responsive, the throttle is in your hand and connected to the rear tyre, so it inspires confidence even in slippery conditions.”