The second night of practice in advance of the 10th running of the Qatar MotoGP race in Doha on Sunday evening saw Cal Crutchlow and Bradley Smith shine under the impressive Losail International Circuit floodlights.
Crutchlow's outstanding form continued in tricky conditions tonight, with light spots of rain falling during the earlier second practice session and a strong wind testing skill and concentration in the third session. The conditions meant the track surface was one more time extremely slippery but Crutchlow excelled to power his Monster Yamaha Tech 3 YZR-M1 machine into the top three again.
The British rider's best pace of 1.56.326 was only 0.242s off the fastest lap time set by rookie Marc Marquez, while teammate Smith produced a magnificent performance to finish inside the top 10.
Smith adapted superbly to the difficult conditions and he defied a lack of experience on his YZR-M1 to rocket into the top six at one stage in FP3.
Growing in confidence as he slashed big chunks of time off his pace, Smith ended with a best time of 1.56.901 to finish in a morale-boosting ninth position on the combined leaderboard.
His final speed was a huge improvement of 1.4s compared to his best pace in last night's opening session and it was mission accomplished for Smith, who achieved one of his main pre-race goals to finish inside the top 10 after FP3.
Tonight's result means under the new qualifying format, both Crutchow and Smith are automatically seeded into tomorrow night's second 15-minute qualifying session in which 12 riders will battle it out for grid positions on the first four rows.
Cal Crutchlow 3rd - 1.56.326:
“The track was not in a good condition again tonight and it was very dirty but I am still happy with my performance and it is good to remain inside the top three. I was confident I'd be in the top 10 to move straight into QP2 and I am looking forward to the 15-minute session to decide places on the grid tomorrow night. I think it will be exciting for the fans and also for us because nobody will be hanging around. I felt comfortable on the bike again in the second session because we made a couple of changes earlier that didn't really work. I still need to improve in the braking zone and I'd like to improve the rear grip too, but I have been fast in every session so far and that bodes well for the race on Sunday night.”
Bradley Smith 9th - 1.56.901:
“I am really happy because one of my big objectives was to make sure I was inside the top 10 tonight and straight into the second qualifying session. Now I've done that I feel like it is a big achievement that I am really proud because it was not easy. I found well over a second in the final session and to finish just over 0.8s away from the top is a fantastic result for me. I didn't realize just how hard you have to push the bike to get down to that pace and it is going to be very hard to ride at that intensity for the whole race. Credit to the other guys who run a consistently fast pace throughout the race because it is incredibly hard and something I will need to focus on improving. My Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team did a great job tonight. They gave me a bike that gave me a lot of confidence and that was proven in just how much faster I was in the final session. I am less than 0.5s away from Valentino so I am really pleased. There's still a lot of work to do on the race set-up but I am truly happy to be inside that top 10.”
Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Press Release
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