Challenging day for Smith under the Andalusian sun

Posted on May 01, 2015 by Monster Yamaha Tech 3

Britain’s Bradley Smith began the Jerez round of the MotoGP World Championship with a finish of 16th place overall in today’s free practice sessions. Smith completed FP1 in 16th position as he started to refine and adjust the setup of his Yamaha YZR-M1, in preparation for race day on Sunday.

In the afternoon, the young British rider pushed onwards as he aimed to cut his time further and set his quickest lap of 1’40.293 on the 17th out of 20. This performance saw him finish the first session in 11th place and three tenths of a second behind his teammate. The 23 year old rider remains fully confident of progressing and undertaking the positive setup work with the Monster Yamaha Tech3 Team, in tomorrow morning’s FP3 session ahead of the all important qualifying shootout.

Bradley Smith: – Position: 16th – Time: 1'40.293 – Laps: 40
"All in all, today has been quite a challenging one for me, yet despite the final position, we managed to gain a lot of valuable information which leaves me positive of improving for the rest of the weekend. The team and I tried the different front and rear tyres as well as a new setting on my second bike. Although we didn’t discover anything hugely promising with the setup, we definitely have a clear direction to head towards tomorrow in order to have a good qualifying. Of course it will be vital to get into the top ten in the morning so that we can advance to QP2. We still have a lot of work to undertake, but I feel optimistic of a strong race this weekend as we know which areas need to be amended, so we will be ready to do better tomorrow."