Monster Yamaha Tech3 rider Bradley Smith completed a fantastic first day rout at the legendary Le Mans circuit to cement himself as the leading Yamaha in the team’s home country of France. Having bounced back impeccably this afternoon from a crash in FP1, the young British rider remained resolute and after undertaking some key alterations to his Yamaha YZR-M1, he established a comfortable setup which gave him the confidence to push and post a best lap of 1:33,920. Smith’s time was a colossal improvement from this morning, and less than half a second from the leading bike of Marc Marquez. His top four result on the opening day sees his confidence sky high and well prepared for a full speed assault in tomorrow’s qualifying session, in view to the 28-lap sprint on Sunday.
Rookie Pol Espargaro proceeded to gather more valuable experience in only his fifth race in the premier class, and shaved off four tenths of a second from the initial time set in FP1 this morning. The reigning Moto2 World champion guided his Yamaha YZR-M1 around the stop and go Le Mans circuit, as he undertook a relentless effort to learn the track on a MotoGP bike. The 22-year-old Catalan finished in 11th with a time of 1.34,506, which was only 0.008 of a second behind multiple world champion Valentino Rossi, as he continues to stride forward in his inaugural MotoGP season. Tomorrow he assertively intends to seize a competitive grid position for race day at the Monster Energy sponsored Grand Prix.
Bradley Smith
Position : 4th
Time :1’33.920
Laps : 37
Bradley Smith -Jerez 2014″After starting the day in a less than ideal way, I am really pleased with what we managed to achieve this afternoon. I am feeling very happy with the bike now, as due to some of the issues we have experienced recently we decided to divert back to the what I was using in Qatar. Therefore, I am confident and I know that I can go fast with it. At the same time, I am slightly disappointed that we couldn’t succeed with our experimentation, but I am excited to continue in this manner during the next sessions. Tomorrow the plan is to fine-tune the setup and then try my best in qualifying to get as high up the grid as I can. Again, I feel confident, am back on the road to completeness and can’t wait to put on a good show for the fans. ”
Pol Espargaro
Position : 11th
Time : 1’34.506
Laps : 45
Pol Espargaro -Jerez 2014“All in all it has been a positive day. This morning we had a really good start and after FP2, I have to say that I’m satisfied with our rhythm as we used the same front tyre for the whole session, and were still able to improve our lap time at the end. We tried different geometric modification on the bike, but not everything went according to plan. So therefore, we went back to our setting from this morning and were able to improve again. This also gives me a lot of confidence for tomorrow and I think we are in better situation than in Jerez.”
TRACK DATA
Pole position : Left
Length : 4,185 m
Width : 13 m
Corners : 14 (9 right, 5 left)
Longest Straight 674 m
Constructed 1966
Modified 2008
CIRCUIT RECORDS
Fastest Lap :
2008 – Dani PEDROSA (SPA) – 1’32.647 – 162.7 km/h
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Pictures for editorial only – Copyright Monster Yamaha Tech3 2014
Picture: Espargaro-LeMans-2014