Smith kicks off Czech GP with positive opening day

Posted on Aug 19, 2016 by Monster Yamaha Tech 3

Monster Yamaha Tech3 Team rider Bradley Smith got off to a promising start at Brno and finished the opening day in 8th after conducting a thorough shakedown. The British rider leapt into action and began making the initial adjustments to the setup of his Yamaha YZR-M1 in FP1. He rounded out the session with a lap that left him just a blink of an eye outside the top ten, with his fastest time being cancelled due to exceeding the track limits. Then, in free practice 2, Smith carried on from where he left off and focused specifically on the behaviour of the tyres over race distance. In addition, he was able to impressively improve on his best time from this morning by 1.1 seconds, as opposed to the overall fastest lap which was cut by only three-tenths of a second. After undertaking a positive start today, the 25-year-old will now seek to continue the momentum tomorrow and seize a strong qualifying position.

Bradley Smith: – Position: 8th – Time: 1'56.494 – Laps: 32
"It was a good first day and the nice thing is that we were able to take some of the positives from Austria so we could continue to work on those points straight away. I always like the back-to-back races, because I feel more natural on the bike on a Friday and as a result, I got up to speed quite quickly. We commenced FP1 well and I felt comfortable with the setting straight away, but unfortunately my best lap time got cancelled as I exceeded the track limits. Having said that, it looked like I was inside the top 8 and then I remained in that position this afternoon. For the first two runs in FP2, we tried to work as much as possible on old tyres just so that we could understand our weakest points when the tyre starts to drop. Then after that, we extracted the best from the new set of Michelins and posted a competitive time. Brno is quite a bumpy track, therefore, having a stable bike is very important and this is what we will work towards tomorrow. We were able to confirm two of the tyre options for both the front and the rear today and we have a clear direction of where to head towards next. I’ve ended the first day positively, so we must try to stay inside the top ten so that we can pass straight through to QP2."