The Australian is Suzuki's only representative this weekend after Loris Capirossi suffered an arm injury on Thursday.
Vermeulen, who took pole in the wet at Assen last year, had struggled to finalise a set-up at the start of qualifying due to the rain this morning, but felt he was making progress by the end of the session.
"It was a difficult qualifying session because we had so much work to get through after losing so much time this morning," he said.
"We had a lot of set-up changes that we wanted to try but it was too wet earlier and we lost a lot of time sitting in the garage just waiting to see what the weather was going to do - so really from the morning session we didn't learn anything at all.
"In the qualifying session we got a little bit lost with set-up because we tried so many things, and in the end we went back to what we ran yesterday and that seemed to work well."
Having been encouraged by his pace at the end of qualifying, Vermeulen hopes he can gain ground in the race.
"My last couple of qualifying laps were pretty good and I managed to get on to the third row and scrape something out of the session," he said.
"At least we are up there and if we get a good start and a strong first few laps, I think we can be competitive and fight for at least a top five finish."
Team boss Paul Denning reckons Vermeulen had done well to salvage eighth on the grid.
"It was a difficult session and we never really achieved the rhythm that we hoped we'd be able to," he said. "However, right at the end he did a great job to get the GSV-R into the top eight and on to the third row of the grid.
"The guys know exactly what is needed for the warm-up and race so hopefully we'll be able to replicate that improvement and run a decent race pace tomorrow. We know that Chris has great potential and that he is ultra hungry for a good result."
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