Crash and Injury for Smith during FP4

Posted on Jun 10, 2017 by Red Bull KTM Factory Racing

Under scorching Spanish sun the three Red Bull KTM Grand Prix Teams fought hard in qualifying for tomorrow's Catalan round for the MotoGP World Championship.

With two new chassis available to both Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro at the Circuit de Catalunya, technical progress has been made today in scorching conditions where the ground temperature was again high for the second weekend on the bounce at 50 degrees celsius. Qualifying in 20th, Espargaro had some turning problems in some corners but made great progress during FP4 when he ran the KTM RC16 bike with a race set up in preparation for tomorrow. It was an unlucky afternoon for Smith who had a high side at turn 2, the bike landing on his left little finger necessitating a visit to hospital first here at the track and then in Barcelona with specialist surgeon Dr. Mir to see what the true extent of the damage is before seeing if he is able to ride tomorrow in the race.

Tom Jojic (Crew Chief Bradley Smith):
"We tried a whole bunch of big things to try to get on top of our main problems. He started to feel positive and better so in FP4 we went with the harder tyres trying to understand what's going to happen in the race and he felt a bit better than FP3 so that was good. Unfortunately Bradley high sided through Turn 2 and his left hand was trapped under the handle bar and he's got a damaged little finger on his left hand – the one that's damaged already. In the medical centre they cleaned it and gave it an X-Ray but they want to clean it properly so they've asked him to go to a hospital in Barcelona where they will clean it and then decide what the best course of action for tomorrow is from there."

Sebastian Risse (Technical Director MotoGP):
"Today we saw some good moments such as during FP4 looking at the race pace we seem to be good with the lap time – not so far away in Pol's case. With Bradley we struggled to find a rhythm for different reasons but then he crashed and now he's injured, so it was anything but smooth. For the race pace tomorrow it will not be the same at the beginning than at the end and what we can achieve looks promising as we believe we can catch up more as the race goes on. It's a different game you play on Sunday."

Races: June 10, 2017 – Moto3 11:00 | Moto2 12:20 | MotoGP 14:00 CET