Smith: “I had the feeling today was worth it”

The Brit secured his and KTM’s best qualifying result of the season with P8 at his home GP

After graduating as the fastest rider in Q1, Bradley Smith (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing) went on to briefly set provisional pole in Q2 at the GoPro British Grand Prix, before settling for eighth in what was a fantastic Saturday afternoon at his home GP.

“Yeah it was nice to be involved, nice to be in the mix. Already this morning in the dry conditions I felt I was going pretty good, P10 in FP3 and I just had the feeling today was worth it,” explained Smith, who laid it all on the line in front of his home fans in tricky conditions:

“The conditions were in our favour in terms of taking an advantage, there were probably a few guys that didn’t want to put everything out there but it’s my British GP, I laid it all on the line out there and it’s funny, four seconds up on everybody showed my intent to be strong and yeah, same with Q2. Going P1 was fun until everybody got up to speed, but you know, really happy with how it’s all turned out. P8 puts us in a good position whether it’s wet or dry tomorrow, and everyone is in the same situation, no one is going to really have full wet track time, the information we have so far we can make a good setting with.”

If forecasts are to be believed, the weather is set to play a huge part in proceedings and with the MotoGP™ race being rescheduled for 11:30 local time (GMT +1), the British rider explains the situation if the race is underway and conditions become too dangerous – just like FP4:

“The nice thing we have as riders is that we can race at hand, should there be too much water on track like there was in FP4, we can raise our hand and already start to inform race direction of that. They’ll be looking tomorrow, because unfortunately due to the accident in FP4 to look out for it. We don’t have jurisdiction as riders to stop it but we have advisory rights so should it get too dangerous, you’ll see hands flying everywhere. Safety is paramount, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow, it might be a little bit hit and miss but fingers crossed everyone gets through a difficult Sunday in the best way possible.”

Wet or dry, Smith looks set to secure a strong result on home turf to continue his solid run of form, with the 27-year-old confirming that he’s weighing up testing roles with Aprilia and Yamaha for next year. 

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