Tech 3 Racing's Bradley Smith has vowed to launch one of his trademark aggressive performances in tomorrow's Estoril Moto2 race after qualifying in 13th position.
Smith powered his Tech 3 Mistral 610 machine to a best time of 1.41.733 in today's qualifying session, which left him just over 0.2s away from the top six.
Working closely with his dedicated Tech 3 Racing crew, Smith made big progress with improving the front-end set-up of his Mistral 610 machine, but is looking to make further improvements to gain more confidence with rear grip ahead of tomorrow's race.
Today's qualifying session turned out to be a difficult afternoon's work for Smith's Belgian team-mate Xavier Simeon.
He will start from 22nd place on the grid with a best time of 1.42.377 and he will analyse data with his Tech 3 Racing crew to try and make his Mistral 610 machine a more consistently competitive package over a race distance.
Bradley Smith 13th 1.41.733 – 22 laps:
“I'm pretty disappointed on one side to be only 13th on the grid but happy on another because I have been competitive all weekend and at least I am starting higher up than the 19th place I qualified in Jerez last week. I am quite confident for the race tomorrow because I feel really happy with the front-end of the bike. We have go t that working very well but I would like to be a bit happier with the rear. We've got some ideas for the race tomorrow so I am looking forward to seeing whether the changes we'll try in the Warm-up session help. Each time I pushed to improve my time this afternoon I got a bit held up in different parts of the track. If we put my ideal times together I'd have been much faster and that's why I'm so optimistic of a strong race tomorrow."
Xavier Simeon 22nd 1.42.377 – 22 laps:
“That was a very disappointing qualifying session and it is quite frustrating. Each time we go out on track this weekend I drop further down the rankings and it seems each time we are less competitive. We have tried too many things to find a solution and at the moment what we have tried has not delivered the results we expected. Right now I can't do more than two fast laps in a row and we have to check what is happening because it is clear Bradley made a big step and we need to do the same. It will be a long night checking the data and trying to come up with a plan for tomorrow that will enable me to be much faster and battle for the points.”
Yamaha Tech 3 Moto2 Press Release
