Bradley Smith says he is working with a new approach to the race weekend at Silverstone which he hopes will pay dividends at his home Grand Prix. The Briton is now working with Esteban Garcia after his KTM team made changes to the set-up in the hope of improving his results and is happy with the way his first day panned out.
With the focus on race preparation, Smith is playing the long game in his efforts to leave Silverstone with a strong result and expects to reap the benefits when he attempts a qualifying simulation tomorrow morning too.
“The main focus of today was my performance over race distance which is something my new crew chief, from his assessment, has said is one of my weaknesses so basically we were trying to put a lot of laps on old tyres and trying to work with the electronics and my riding style to improve. It also puts a little bit of fire in my belly because if I’m looking really slow in the timesheets, it will be good for tomorrow when I get a new tyre and start to go fast and push harder.”
With the race in mind, Smith is encouraged by the performance of the tyre compounds over a longer distance, especially given the unusually high temperatures here.
“We’re able to put a lot of laps on the soft tyre to see if it’s a race option and there’s certainly no drop in performance and I was able to stay consistent. Surprisingly, the hard seems pretty good. It seems like it’s a good option for hotter conditions like this afternoon but let’s see if it’s a race option. Pol was fast today which shows promising signs for tomorrow because if we look at the test from Misano and what we expect we can do tomorrow, we’re happy with where we’re at.”
