Stiggy Honda's John Hopkins managed to put his Fireblade on the fourth row of the grid for tomorrow's brace of World Superbike races at Valencia despite never having used Pirelli qualifying tyre before.

The former Kawasaki MotoGP man made his Superpole debut at the track today and stuck to team-mate Leon Haslam through the first session with Haslam's experience on the tyres just edging him ahead in the second.

"It's been an interesting day with learning everything, the qualifying session in the morning and then going into Superpole. I had to jump straight in with the qualifiers as I have never used a Pirelli qualifier in my life, but we tried to make the best of our situation," said Hopkins.

" Unfortunately we didn't qualify anywhere near we would have liked to. We made a lot of headway with the machine in the last session. We had some chattering but managed to improve and made some positive changes to the machine. Everyone will be packed together so it will be tough tomorrow, I need to get off the line as fast as I can and gain as many positions as possible."