Championship leader Jonathan Rea admits he’s not 100 per cent comfortable on track at Magny-Cours just yet and hopes tomorrow will bring more improvement.

Finishing today with the fourth quickest time and one place behind his Kawasaki Racing team-mate Tom Sykes, Rea is fully aware of the task in hand.

He believes if he and the team can work out the issues this evening, they could be well poised to reap the benefits in this weekend’s races.

“In the first session we faced some issues with the bike and getting up to speed,” he said. “Also, Pirelli have brought the race tyre from Lausitzring but not enough quantity so this morning we were going out on the soft tyre in the not ideal conditions and then this afternoon we changed to use the option that we think could be good for the race, the SC1, the harder tyre because we expect it to be cooler on Saturday and Sunday.

“We got a lot of information but I’m still not 100 per cent comfortable out there. We’re suffering a little bit with chatter in the rear of the bike but apart from that everything is working quite well, very consistent and not making too many mistakes which is important.

“I feel like we need to sit down tonight, understand our package and try and improve a bit so it’s even more comfortable to make that lap time because last year at Magny-Cours it was very easy to go fast but it’s a circuit where you need to keep the lap time until the end so with that in mind we’ve done a good job today.”