Bradley Smith thrilled by best ever qualifying

Bradley Smith was thrilled with his best ever MotoGP qualifying performance in Brno this afternoon when the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 rider finished less than 0.2s away from a maiden front row.

Smith’s sixth place on the grid equals his previous best start in Assen at the end of June, but never has he been so close to pole position with another brilliant performance on his YZR-M1 machine today.

The 22-year-old was only 0.487s behind teammate Cal Crutchlow, who stormed to his second pole position in MotoGP with a record-breaking lap of 1.55.527 that was the best ever on two wheels at the Czech Republic venue.

Smith has now qualified inside the top 10 at the last five races and he said: “It equals my best qualifying position but I am much closer to the front than ever before by quite a chunk. I think the closest I’ve been to pole was 0.8s, so it is quite a big chunk and I am definitely pleased with that performance.”

Front-end improvements have been the main reason behind Smith’s eye-catching display, which saw him finish ahead of nine-times world champion Valentino Rossi and Laguna Seca runner-up Stefan Bradl.

Smith said: “In Indy we tried to cure some of the problems with the front of the bike but we went the wrong way and it didn’t quite work. This weekend I started immediately on the pace and this is a track that the Yamaha seems to like a lot.

I’ve always gone well here too and I was on pole back in my 125 days. But we improved the front-end of the bike a lot. It has given me the chance to enter the corner faster and faster and that’s the Yamaha style and suits the nature of this track. I am still finding different bits and pieces but my understanding of the bike has got better and understanding of the Bridgestone front is better too. It is still so super good that you need to keep taking advantage of it and unfortunately I’ve not been able to unlock the key until this weekend.”

World championship leader Marc Marquez was third fastest but Smith was incredibly close on the second row.

When asked by MCN if he had left any time out on track that might have clinched him a shock first front row start in the premier class, Smith said: “I extracted the best I could. I was a bit of a wimp into Turn 10 but that’s only because I looked down at the dashboard and could see I was 0.3s under my best lap. I didn’t want to run wide and it is easy to do that into that downhill corner. The rest of the track I got everything out of the lap that I could and I was getting my elbow down in places and that’s not my riding style, so I am obviously feeling confident on leaning the bike over.”