Britain’s Alex Lowes was straight on to race-winning pace at the Suzuka Eight-Hours test despite never having seen the bike or track before and only having 15 dry laps over the two days.

Lowes was immediately down to 2’09s lap times on the Yoshimura Suzuki which is the pace the July race is run and says he felt surprisingly comfortable on the bike straight away.

I only got 15 dry laps over the two days which was a shame but the bike and team were good and I'm looking forward to the race. It would have been a lot better if we got some more dry time to do some longer runs but my pace was good I got straight down to 2.09s,” said Lowes, speaking to bikesportnews.com from Japan.

“I did about six of them at the end of the dry session we had. There was a lot of traffic but that will be like the races as all teams were at this test.

The team was happy and my dry pace was as fast as any of the others on Bridgestone so it was all good. But it's about being able to do 28 lap stints, keep out of trouble with the slower riders and at a consistent pace. I learned a lot when I was there.

“They make a big thing about being able to do the pace for the stint. They wouldn't care of you did a 2’07 lap because in the race if you average h2’09s then it's winning pace. Their way of working is really interesting as they time your in and out laps and get everything on paper to look at after but they were happy and I'm looking forward to going back.”