Monster Yamaha Tech3 team riders Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro maintained their tireless efforts on the second day of testing in Malaysia with encouraging progress being made in all areas. As a result, both riders remain optimistic for the final day tomorrow.

Bradley Smith continued his thorough testing programme as he prepares for his fourth season in the premier class. The 25 year old completed the day with a lap that was impressively 1.9 seconds quicker than yesterday's, and just two tenths back from 5th place. Whilst Pol Espargaro also took a step forward as he cut sixth tenths off yesterday's personal best after setting the time on only his 6th lap. The young Spaniard unfortunately fell twice during the day, yet he wasn't injured and keenly awaits returning to the track tomorrow.

Bradley Smith  - 10th / 2'01.107 / 59 laps

"Today was constructive and I am pleased with what we accomplished, but we still need to do more tomorrow. We ran all day on hard tyres, which wasn't our original plan yet, after using this compound at the end of the yesterday, we decided to carry on with it this morning and then finally, we were all forced to use the hard tyre after Loris Baz crashed. Anyway, we used the 2016 electronics all day and worked well on finding solutions to some of issues we have had yesterday and now I feel a lot more confident with them. For the race distance, we need to do a bit of work. Here in Sepang, it's obviously hot and slippery so we have to focus on building a bike that is consistent for 20 laps. At the moment, my pace on one lap is quite fast but if the tyre starts to drop, I want to be able to feel a bit more comfortable than I do now. We also tried a couple of different chassis configurations today and gained some interesting information, but although we didn't find anything better than what we have, we have a clear program for the future. Tomorrow we will see if we can do a race simulation. I would like to do a lengthy run in order to get some fitness as well as a good idea about the performance of the tyres and the electronics over a distance. So hopefully we can run for as long as possible and have another positive day to close the test."

Pol Espargaró  - 15th / 2'01.992 / 32 laps

"The day had some positives as we continued our work with the electronics and definitely found some improvements, but having said that, we have to understand what caused me to fall twice at turn five. On the data we can't see any difference compared to the other laps. I may have been slightly faster but altogether, and compared to the other Yamaha riders, I am not particularly fast there, so it's difficult to understand what's going wrong. We may have to adjust the setting for turn 5 or maybe even change the front tyre pressure. Anyway, we got a bit lost because if you crash twice, you always take two steps back before making a step forward again and it disturbed the programme we were trying to run. All in all, we can't say it's been the best of days, but there are still some solid positives to take and we have to find our way back tomorrow. Despite this, I am really confident that we can be strong again on the final day."

Pol Espargaro