Jake Dixon experienced the Petronas Yamaha on qualifying Michelin around Silverstone this afternoon, and while lining up on the back row for the BriishGP he was just 1.5s adrift of pole.

Recovering quickly from his first off, during the morning’s cold FP3, the excitable Brit is thoroughly enjoying the premier class experience in front of his home support, despite the “massive learning curve.”

“We started with a bit of a difficult day, because obviously crashing in FP3 wasn’t ideal, but was my own mistake,” Dixon admitted. “This is what happens when obviously you don’t have too much time to learn. You start to try to push the limit and understand the tyres as soon as possible. Obviously wasn’t ideal but, yeah, today was really good and really enjoyed it and it’s just been a massive learning curve.

“Obviously I don’t want to crash and I don’t think the team and Yamaha want me to crash because it costs them money, but I think, yes, it definitely makes you learn to understand where the limit of the tyre is. Like I say it was my own mistake and I want to apologise to them first of all, but it really set me up. It took me a couple of laps to get the confidence back but once I got that back, I was back on track.

“I don’t doubt given the time, and given the right opportunity I would be able to do a very good job with the big bikes and as you can see, I’m not so far away, around a two-minute lap.”

With just two days in the top class, Dixon is already aware of what he’s learning and what still needs work but is pleased with his initial progress, and rightly so.

“An area that I need to improve on is the mid-part of braking,” the 25-year-old explained. “The initial brake point is actually the same as all the others, Fabio and everyone like that but my midpoint on actual braking I don’t break hard enough so I don’t decelerate enough. Basically that was all that happened, I broke late. I didn’t decelerate enough and then was trailing too much brake over the bumps and unfortunately went down.

“As you see in FP4, the pace is a lot, lot slower and I was able to be a lot more within the mix of the other riders around me, and for ages I was a long time in front of Cal and a couple of other riders. In the race is obviously gonna be difficult and not to get too excited, where I start to spin the rear too much and overheat the rear, because I think this is a big thing on this bike.

“I’m just going to try and stay with the group for as long as I can possibly stay with them and try not to use my rear tyre too much. Because you got to understand, obviously I haven’t done too many laps on these tyres and it’s not just that easy to go and race with these guys and not use too much tyre.

“I needed to improve my leaning the bike more, which is a strange thing to say on a big bike, but the angle that you can get with these tyres is incredible. If you put more angle, you get more turning.

“Just minor areas, but the minor things make the biggest of differences, especially around here with big sweeping corners. It makes all the difference. And when you do lean, with this Yamaha, the bike turns incredible!

“I’ve enjoyed a lot. Obviously, I wish I was gonna get more time on the bike and I wish I could be a full time MotoGP rider, but I obviously don’t have that luxury. But I feel like today I’ve done a really good job, I feel like I can pat myself on the back and say that, to be here within 60 laps and do a 2’00.8 is not so bad so, yeah, I enjoyed it a lot.”