Eugene Laverty (Milwaukee Aprilia) made his first appearance at the Chang International Circuit in Friday free practise, and he secured a spot straight into Superpole Two.

After a tough weekend in the opening round at Phillip Island, Laverty is working closely with his team to work through their issues, and has already made some positive steps in Thailand. Using his knowledge from his previous seasons in the World Superbike Championship, the team are working hard to fix the problems they are facing.

First impressions of the Buriram based circuit are positive for Laverty as he looks ahead to Superpole and Race One tomorrow. “In the first run this morning it took me a bit of time to adjust, but once I got going I felt good. This track is like two halves; in the first section I’m pretty strong in the hard breaking areas, but in the tight and twisty sections I’m really struggling to get round. That’s the area we’ve got to focus on with the bike, but we’re making progress and we’re moving forward.”

Happy to get straight into the all important Superpole Two, the 30 year old has achieved a target he set himself ahead of the MOTUL Thai Round: “To go straight through to SP2 on Friday is what we need to be doing every weekend, especially at new circuit. Although it wasn’t easy and we had some new problems.”

Discussing the changes made to his RSV4 RF machine: “There are a few things we’ve done since Phillip Island, the team only had 10 days but they worked really quickly. It shows the guys want to solve the issues and we looked at some of the things we did back in 2012 and 2013. Just some things that were tried and tested and we implemented those because we did the hard work back then so we can use that experience now.”

Laverty will head out for Free Practise Three at 10:45LT (+8 GMT), before entering the battle around Buriram for pole position from 13:55 LT.