Bradley Smith escapes injury in 120mph Jerez crash

Bradley Smith was fortunate to walk away with just bumps and bruises after his winter testing schedule ended with a 120mph crash at the Jerez circuit in Spain today.

The Tech 3 Racing rider had just set his best lap of the test with a 1.42.978 on a new set of Dunlop tyres when he lost the front-end at the fast Turn 12 right-hander leading to the last corner.

Smith escaped injury and he ended in a somewhat disappointing 14th place on the Moto2 timesheets, despite being satisfied with a new chassis and swingarm package on the Mistral 610 machine.

Smith was 0.995s behind pacesetter Claudio Corti and he told MCN: “Turn 12 is certainly not the ideal place to be crashing. I just put new tyres in for the last run and I did a 42.9 on my first lap, which was my quickest of the test. And then straight after that I crashed.

“Maybe the bike is not quite ready for 42 yet. I ran into Turn 12 and I flicked in as normal and opened the gas and it unloaded the front and just folded. Before you even get to the gravel there you know it is going to hurt. My body took more of a shock just because it is not used to crashing. 

“It has been a long time since I had a crash like that and when you throw yourself down the road at 120mph it can hurt. Luckily it was worse for the bike than it was for me.”

While content with progress made with the development of the Mistral 610 machine, the 21-year-old Oxfordshire rider admitted there was plenty of work to be done in the early part of the 2012 to emerge as a consistent podium threat.

He added: “We are comfortable in the 43s but as soon as we try and up the pace we have a problem. It is frustrating because the 43s come quite easy yet a 42 is a far reach and a 41.9 from the fast guys is a long way away.

“Ideally we needed to be in a better position leaving here but technically we are in a better situation than we ever have been. We certainly know our bike inside out now but we are still searching for the optimum setting because we are still a way off the fast boys.”

For seven pages of coverage from the Jerez test, see the March 28 issue of MCN.