Andrea Dovizioso completed his first day on the Petronas Yamaha in the top 10 after setting a 1’31.597 at Valencia on Friday.

Despite a wet morning practice, Dovizioso remained confident on the 2019 M1 through the drying afternoon session, rounding out the day ninth in the combined times and with a provisional place in Saturday’s Q2 shootout.

While the Italian is aware of the hard work needed to maintain the run for Saturday’s FP3 session, he certainly has the target in his sights, after a steady start to his SRT career.

“Yes for sure,” Dovizioso said on Friday being his best day on the Yamaha this year. “Because from the first few laps on the track I was feeling quite good.

"Not wonderful because the bike is very particular, you have to be so smooth and normally when you try to be faster, you have more aggression, but with this bike, you have to be careful about that and don't work in that way.

“So the beginning, in the first few laps, I was feeling a bit too aggressive but when I try to stay calm the lap time comes. From the beginning the lap time was quite good and I was happy to feel that.

"I think the conditions were a bit strange and not every rider felt 100%, so I think tomorrow will be more difficult. But in any case I'm closer because as we can see, I'm six-tenths instead of 1.1, normally I'm 1.1 seconds away at the end of practice. So I'm better.

“I'm happy about that, but this is still nothing for what we need for the race because you have to work to try to be fast and not use a lot the rear tyre on the left - because Valencia as everybody knows is a strange track. You have to keep for a long time the angle, so tomorrow we will work more on the race pace.

At the end, it was just turn one tricky, all the other parts were good, normal,” he said of the afternoon conditions. “So everybody was able to ride in a normal way. Just turn one it was tricky and didn't work easily, in the perfect way but overall, I have a good feeling with the track and with the bike.

“I think tomorrow morning we will do two tyres like everybody to try to be in the top 10 - it would be very difficult to be in the top 10. And in the afternoon we keep the same tyres as the morning to try to make some laps because in Valencia the drop of the rear tyre effect a lot the race.”