It was good to get my first points of the season at Le Mans but it was still a disappointing day for me.

I will take the six points but I would have been much happier with fifth or sixth which I think was a realistic target here.

Bridgestone brought some new tyres to France which were of a soft to medium compound but unfortunately I could only use them for practice and qualifying.

We had to revert to the standard type for the race as we knew they would not last a race distance.

We knew the race tyre was going to struggle and it started to deteriorate from about half-distance so maybe I should have gone for the softer one.

My teammate Nobuatsu Aoki also had problems in the latter stages of the race so it was lucky for us both that it was stopped after 20 of 26 laps.

It was satisfying to finish sixth in final qualifying but it was not without its problems.

I lost a chain near the end of qualifying after a sprocket came off the bike.

This is a bit unheard of these days but it can still happen. It was a bit of a scary moment.

It is just another part of racing and you have to forget about it and get on with things very quickly.

The big four-strokes got away really fast in the race and there were so many riders trying to get through that I was squeezed out at the first corner.

Also, when the Proton is in second or third gear, it tends to wheelie quite a bit which doesn't help.

It rained on and off during the race but I didn't know whether they were going to stop it.