Monster Yamaha Tech3 Team rider Bradley Smith showed his determination to finish in 8th position on the second day of testing at the final pre season outing. The young British rider dug deep throughout the session under the floodlights to post a top time of 1'55.648 after completing a total of 49 laps around the Losail International circuit. His result left him fractionally behind 4th position with a gap of just 0.148 as he continued to improve by cutting his lap time by three tenths of a second. This leaves the 23-year-old rider fully charged and primed to resume his performance tomorrow in the final day of testing.

Meanwhile Pol Espargaro shot to 9th position after a rapid run in the desert, leaving him with a best time of 1'55.658, which was only 0.010 behind his teammate. The 2014 MotoGP rookie of the year successfully addressed the front end issues that he faced yesterday and completed a total of 46 laps, as he set his best time mid way through his day on the 29th lap. His leap in performance was illustrated by notably cutting a whole second from his time set yesterday. In addition, his result was a blink of an eye behind 5th position by a mere eight hundredths of a second, which leaves him confident for further progress tomorrow.

     
 Bradley Smith  - Position : 8th Time : 1'55.648 Laps : 49 

"We had a really busy day today as we had to work through a long check list that we were given by Yamaha and the task was to confirm different ideas, both positive as well as lesser ones. Sometimes when you do these kind of tests you feel as if you are losing some time, but actually it's very important as you might discover a modification which may help in the future. I'm happy the pace was there today and I was able to improve my lap time from yesterday. I managed to save one set of tyres which will enable us to do a long run tomorrow as well as my practice sessions, so now I need a good rest and I will then go for it again. I believe my bike is 95% there, we may just need to improve the balance of the Yamaha a little bit in order to have even more corner speed which is our main strength, but all in all I'm pleased."


Pol Espargaro  - Position : 9th Time : 1'55.658  Laps : 46 

"Today has been much more positive than yesterday because we were able to solve the issue with the front tyre which we were struggling with on day 1. In addition, we manage to work through our testing schedule where we evaluated several settings that we were not able to try at Sepang 2. As soon as we put in the second tyre option from Bridgestone at the beginning of the session, my confidence with the front of the bike improved a lot and the adjustments we made afterwards increased it even more. Later on, we worked mainly on electronic setups such as the anti wheelie and I'm really pleased with how the day went. Even though we didn't concentrate on the lap time at all, it's nice to see that the other Yamahas are less than two tenths away which means we did a good job today and I can't wait to get back on the bike tomorrow afternoon."