Leon Haslam has revealed he is still trying to overcome bike issues, despite pulling together a front-row start for tomorrow’s first race.

The championship leader managed to lay down a 1’26.188 in the final third of this this afternoon’s qualifying, just 0.036 off pole-setter Bradley Ray but more than a tenth slower than Dixon’s fastest lap of the weekend from yesterday’s second practice.

Early on in Q1, however, the JG Speedfit Kawasaki rider looked to have made a rare mistake as he ran off at the Hairpin, but later revealed it was due to a lingering problem which he also suffered at Knockhill.

Although he had to dismount and reverse out of the barriers after just nudging them with his front wheel, Haslam managed to get back in the saddle and clock a lap that sent him through to Q2.

“We’re still having an issue with the backshift that we had at Knockhill and it cost me a race win there,” he said.

“I just hit a false neutral, it blipped out of gear on me – a bit of back brake action going into the Hairpin wasn’t ideal. 

Despite the problem, Haslam says he’s delighted to be on the front row for tomorrow’s first race and feels he’s steadily returning to the form he had at the team’s Cadwell test last month.

“I was pushing every lap, I knew it was close, so I just thought if I got a lap together I’d be good but I made a little mistake on the last lap.

“But we’re getting back to where we were in the test. We tested here six weeks ago and we were really fast, a lot faster than even today. 

“We’re slowly getting that feeling back, we’ve been working a lot on race pace and I’m really happy with a front row start.”