Smith "should be ready to race at Assen"

Finger injury kept the Brit from racing in the Catalan GP - but he should be back on the grid in the Netherlands

Bradley Smith (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing) suffered a crash in FP4 that saw the MotoGP™ podium finisher forced to sit out the rest of the weekend at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, as well as missing the subsequent three days of testing for the Austrian factory from Monday to Wednesday. With infection a key risk but everything progressing well, Smith is hopeful he'll be back up to "90%" for the next race at the TT Circuit Assen.

Bradley Smith: "Since the crash on Saturday we've been checking my finger every 24 hours to see there's no infection and to see the rate of progress of the healing. Right now the doctors are happy day by day with how it's looking so basically we're not going to do any skin graft or further operations yet which is fantastic. They don't expect a full recovery of the wound short term, but it should be ready to race at Assen. Now it's just a case of continuing to do as much as possible to speed up the recovery with creams and cleanliness so hopefully in just over a week we'll be ready to be back to around 90% for Assen."