Hofmann delighted with top ten

The Pramac D'Antin rider had been unhappy with his set-up in practice and also suffered technical problems, then had to switch to his spare bike at the end of qualifying after further mechanical issues with his primary machine.

But when he rejoined at the end of the session, Hofmann jumped to 10th on the grid - his best starting position since last year's Dutch Grand Prix.

"We had so many problems today," Hofmann told autosport.com.

"I parked the bike in the morning due to a clutch problem, then parked the bike in the afternoon.

"I went straight out and changed a lot of the set-up on bike one, and straight away it felt a lot better on the used tyres.

"Then I had to park it and come back and tell the boys to change everything on bike two, and it looked like it would take 20 minutes, so all I had was one flying lap on another set of race tyres and three Qs (qualifiers).

"It doesn't matter if you lose three hours, for me it's important that you have the feeling in the end, and it looks like we found it because straight away I felt much more comfortable.

"It always seems like when things go really wrong, we bring it together in the end, so it's really good.

"I was really happy coming over the finish line and seeing myself on that big screen with the top ten on it."

Hofmann said he had not realised how good his lap would be until he completed it.

"It's like always, if you try hard and feel fast, you're not. On the last lap, I didn't really feel fast, but it was just a good lap," he said.

"I was doing it on my own because everyone was playing around and waiting, so I just went for it."