Polesitter Glenn Irwin says he is starting to understand the science behind the perfect lap – but insists the one that took him to the top of the Bennetts British Superbike timesheets today still wasn’t it.

The Be Wiser Ducati rider clocked a hot lap of 1’24.628s early on in today’s final qualifying scrap, and despite hard charges from Josh Brookes and Jake Dixon in final minutes, no-one was able to topple him.

As the Northern Irishman celebrated his first ever BSB pole, he admitted his lap had been far from perfect, but says he was happy to finally break his pole duck.

“I think I’m beginning to understand how we do fast laps now, and we’ve been getting closer and closer for the last three or four rounds,” he said. “But that lap wasn’t the perfect lap.

“It all came together until the penultimate corner where I made a mistake but I knew it was good enough.

“What was nice was I was able to go out after that and get a lap on my own and be underneath by best lap by a couple of tenths before I made a mistake. It was nice knowing I had that fast one in my locker already.”

And while he knows starting at the top of the grid tomorrow is important, he says his thoughts are now only on the racing.

“Of course the qualifying position is important but that’s been and gone now and everyone is looking at the race pace. We seem strong so we’ll see.

“As far as my first pole goes, yes it’s a great achievement, this is an extremely hard level but my outlook on racing is that I want to keep going to the top

“Yeah, it’s great to tick a British Superbike pole off but I wouldn’t be content with that going forwards, I want to do well and now I need to look at going even better.”