Smith suffers '500 crash'

Bradley Smith suffered one of the biggest crashes of his career tonight at the Losail International Circuit, with an old-school 500 era highside spitting him off his Tech 3 Yamaha half way though free practice one.

“That was a 500 crash. I’ve watched many classic bike races and that was definitely a 500 crash. I proved that traction control doesn’t do everything and that was a big one.”

“We made a setting that enabled me to carry more mid-corner speed and that’s what I was looking for. Unfortunately it took away a little bit of edge grip, hence the reason why I went flying to the moon. The good thing is we found something but the negative is it wasn’t quite enough for what I needed. I was glad I was able to go back out on the bike and at least I could do a 55.4 to get me inside the top 10 and go through to QP2.”

Smith was lucky to avoid the pirouetting Yamaha M1, and fortunately the bike only just avoided him as it span itself into destruction.

“In a crash like that you have no idea. I knew I was going over, so I tried to tuck and land on my back. But you don’t know where the bike is. Looking at the video, luckily I got away with it lightly. The bike is pretty much done and sorry to my crew for that because they have a long night ahead of them.