Bradley Smith (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing) has had some tough races for the Austrian factory of late, but Misano marked a landmark for the British rider with his first top ten on a KTM. Sticking to his guns and rhythm, the main aim was to stay on the bike and come out the other side in what was a new challenge for man and machine - with the mission most definitely accomplished.
Now it's on to Aragon, where KTM have tested, with hopes high to close the gap to the front once again - after having improved that race by race in the dry.
Bradley Smith, P10: "We’ve got to be super happy with what we were able to do today. In terms of distance to the leaders we still need to work on it, but just getting through that race today was our main achievement. It was really slippery out there; I think we saw 22 crashers in Moto2 and Moto3 and about 10 in MotoGP, so I just stuck to my guns, stuck to my rhythm, did the best that I could and we came away with 10th position. It was a nice way to finish what has already been a step in the right direction this weekend, and finally a good result on Sunday too.
"We’ve got a lot of experience and a lot of data now from this race. We’ve had some wet sessions, but that’s our first time going from full wet to drying conditions and putting a full race distance on tyres, so it’s going to be interesting for the guys to look into. We have a bike that’s braking very well with the front tyre, we have a bike that accelerates quite well, but on lean angle is somewhere where we need to improve at the minute. Like I said, the guys are going to get their teeth into all of the information and dissect it as much as possible. We got good feedback from the motorcycle – we weren’t fast, but we were able to keep it on two wheels, which is a good success.
"Looking to Aragon, we tested there just before the summer break so we have two good days of data. Right now the bike seems to be working well – I’m not sure how our lap times are going to compare to the other guys, but I’m certainly starting to feel more at home and comfortable on the RC16. We’ll have three riders out there: myself, Pol and Mika, which will be great for us – more data, more knowledge, so let’s see what we can do."