Uphill start for Smith in sunny Texas

Posted on Apr 12, 2014 by Monster Yamaha Tech 3

Monster Yamaha Tech’3 Bradley Smith finished today’s free practice sessions in optimistic spirits at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas for the second round of the MotoGP World Championship.

Smith lowered his lap times from the first free practice session by a full second with the conditions being sunny and dry, at the state of the art track, which features the longest straight of a circuit on the Grand Prix calendar.

Bradley relentlessly amassed a total of 36 laps of the Texan circuit across both of today’s sessions to finish in 10th place in the combined times. In his second appearance aboard the Yamaha YZR-M1 in Texas, Smith posted a best time of 2:05.366 which means that he has already lapped faster than last year, with a gap of just over half a second to the fastest Factory Yamaha of Valentino Rossi. After having spent the first day evaluating all of the possible tyre options and setting his fastest time on the harder one, the young British rider remains confident of a top 6 result in tomorrow’s qualifying session.

Bradley Smith - 10th - 2:05.366:
“The biggest positive of today is that I am riding faster and more confident on the track compared to last year. I feel great with the bike especially in sector 1 and 3, but I still need to improve in the second part of the circuit as well as in the last one. This afternoon we were able to test both tyre solutions, the medium one as well as the hard one. With the hard tyre I feel really good and I also did my fastest lap with it. However, as the weather may change we will have to choose the tyre accordingly for the rest of the weekend, but we are in a good position to make the right decision.  Overall, today was useful as we collected very valuable data and we know how to go quicker, which will hopefully be by another second.”