Bradley Smith says he is 'pleased' with the progress KTM made over the three-day MotoGP test at Sepang with its new RC16.
The Briton's place within the Austrian marque's ranks looked under threat in the middle of last year after a lacklustre start to his season, but was eventually retained by the team for 2018.
Smith ended the test 19th overall, just two and a half tenths down on team-mate Pol Espargaro in 17th, though felt he had to “sacrifice” doing a time attack on the final day after Espargaro pulled out following a 250km/h crash on the Monday.
“Day one and day two seemed to get very well,” said Smith.
“Unfortunately with my team-mate getting injured it meant I had to do all the work on Tuesday, so it was a very busy day.
“So I had to sacrifice going for a lap time a little bit and work more for the project. But I'm pleased with the first three days, we learned a lot and I got up to speed quickly, which made me happy.
“Tuesday was one of those tricky days where the track conditions weren't quite as good, but I think in general we managed to get through most of the test program and we've done a good job for the engineers.”
KTM brought a new aerodynamic fairing to Sepang to test, though Smith only had limited track time with it, and remains unsure if the team will bring it to Thailand in two weeks for further evaluation.
“We had a lot of new things to try and the fairing was just one of the pieces we need to evaluate, trying to learn as much information as we possibly can,” he added.
“It's just the first prototype, so it's a case of the guys analysing all the data, and then we'll decide if it's something we'll continue to run and try in Thailand.”
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