Sylvain Guintoli and Alex Lowes ended Friday’s proceedings in fourth and sixth respectively, proving to be on track for a positive final weekend of the season. Guintoli, who won his 2014 World Championship at the Qatari track acknowledges it’s a favourite circuit of his, however after positive results o Friday evening, he is feeling confident ahead of the weekend regardless of previous results.

“Yes it was a good start for us today with good work done towards the races,” said Guintoli.  “We managed to improve quite a lot with the new tyres and we are looking forward to the race tomorrow. It will be a tough one but I like this place a lot so I hope we can do well. I think everybody is in the same situation (with tyres losing grip towards the end) but the track is only going to improve tomorrow, we will have a bit more rubber tomorrow and we aren’t far off of race distance so fingers crossed we can make it tomorrow.”

Alex Lowes agrees that the track conditions will only improve saying, “The track was in quite good condition straight away, it was definitely in a better condition from the first practice than in previous years. I think it will be similar tomorrow and our second session was a bit later than the race time but it seems that the conditions would be the same for the race.”

The Brit was happy with his sixth place but admitted the positive progress comes too late in the season. However he looks ahead the weekend’s races where he is confident he can get positive results.

“Obviously we’ve been faster in practice quite a lot but it’s a shame because in the last few rounds with two healthy riders we’ve been making some good progress that would have been nice if it came a few months earlier,” said Lowes. “I really enjoyed the bike today, I felt ok but it would have been a bit nice to be a bit quicker. I’ve worked as hard as I can with the two hour slots we were given and I think I put myself in with the best chance of doing a decent job tomorrow.”