Monster Yamaha Tech3 team rider Bradley Smith began his round 17 campaign with a resolute display on the first day of action at the world famous Sepang International Circuit. The British star arrived in Malaysia after impressively concluding last Sunday’s Australian GP in 8th, despite an ongoing knee injury and he wasted no time in immediately launching into action in Free Practice One where the riders first sampled the recently resurfaced track. Here, Smith finished less than a second back from third and the encouraging performance left him fired up for the afternoon. However, a typical Malaysian downpour disturbed play and meant that the asphalt was wet when FP2 started. This did not deter Smith, who continued his work as he set his fastest time in the final moments of the session, which left him in 4th. The 25 year old’s personal best from FP1 sees him end the day in 14th, and the 2015 leading satellite rider now looks on to producing a determined ride tomorrow to claim a solid grid placement for Sunday’s race.

Meanwhile, Pol Espargaro endured the tricky Malaysian weather to complete day one three positions behind his teammate in the combined standings. The 2013 Moto2 World Champion got straight to work when the opening session commenced as he took the initial steps in setting up his MotoGP bike for the Grand Prix. He gradually improved as the shakedown continued, before he set his fastest time on his final lap of 16, which resulted in the Spaniard ending the practice three-tenths behind his Monster Yamaha Tech3 team partner. When FP2 kicked off, Espargaro courageously took to the track as he collected valuable data for a wet setup, with rain being a constant possibility in Malaysia. He braved the damp conditions to post his personal best on his 9th lap before he headed back to the pit box and decided sit out the rest of the session. Espargaro now hopes for a dry FP3 practice in order to up his pace and speed into the top 10 to directly qualify for the final Q2 shootout.  


Bradley Smith - Position: 14th Time: 2'02.484  Laps: 25

"Overall, the first day was quite positive at Sepang. This morning, I felt pretty good and we used both options of front tyres that are available; a medium compound and a hard. This harder tyre was new for me and I haven’t used it this year so far, but it was good to complete some distance on it and I felt comfortable. I didn’t change the rear tyre because I wanted to put almost a full race distance on it for Sunday, however, maybe this wasn’t the best plan for today with the changeable weather. Yet, I always prefer to focus on my race setting, rather than putting in a fast lap on Friday, so now we have to hope for dry weather for FP3 tomorrow. This afternoon, the conditions were tricky and to be honest, completing too many laps with wet tyres didn’t make sense because there wasn’t a lot of water on the track. We didn’t need to risk anything so we waited and then in the final stages I went out and it was good to assess these conditions because there is a chance that we may have to experience this sort of weather again this weekend. Anyway, tomorrow, we hope that we can push inside of the top ten and then go straight through to Q2."

Pol Espargaro - Position: 17th Time: 2'02.732 Laps: 26

"To be honest, it almost feels like we didn’t really ride today because the conditions and the weather made it tricky for us to evaluate our situation. This morning, the track was very dirty and there were also still some wet patches so we didn’t have much of an opportunity to work out how the bike runs here, or how we are doing in comparison to the other riders. The new asphalt seems to be grippy in the dry conditions even if there are a few areas that take some time to dry. However, with regards to the dirty surface itself, the issue is that it becomes tricky when setting up the bike because it’s hard to know if it’s the tyres, the setting or the unclean track that is limiting us. With the rain, it’s too much to expect the circuit to be a lot cleaner tomorrow, so it will be challenging. For the afternoon, it was one of those sessions that wasn’t wet or dry, it was somewhere in between and there was not a lot of reason to go out. We hope that tomorrow morning will be dry so that we can cut our time and then go through to QP2. This morning, unfortunately, we selected the wrong compound for the final minutes which prevented us from improving our lap as much as we wanted to and this could be an issue due to the weather, however, we will do our best to fight for a good qualifying position tomorrow."