10th-placed Bradley Smith says the Australian MotoGP weekend was always seen as a “really important” weekend for KTM, after it secured its best result of the 2017 season at Phillip Island.
Smith and teammate Pol Espargaro registered the Austrian marque's only joint top 10 finish of its debut season at Phillip Island last year, and was just 16 seconds from the win.
As a result, Smith says KTM this year's Australian race was always “one to try to focus on”, with rear tyre life the main focus for the Briton last weekend.
Coming from a lowly 16th in qualifying – a necessary “sacrifice” for Smith as he worked on race pace in practice – the Briton found himself in eight after the first few turns, and went onto secure his first top 10 result since the German Grand Prix in July.
“We saw Phillip Island as a really important weekend for KTM and for me,” he said.
“The bike seemed to work quite well here last year, so it was always one to try to focus on.
“The team did a fantastic job. The main aim of all the weekend was to setup the bike as best as I could to look after the rear tyre as much as possible.
“That caused us to sacrifice our qualifying a little bit because I was still trying to work on that, but I think it paid off today.
“I had a great first lap, from 16th to eighth, and tried to hold my position for as long as possible.
“Unfortunately, towards the end of the race, I just didn’t have anything left for [Franco] Morbidelli or Aleix [Espargaro], but, once again, top KTM and outworking and outsmarting my teammate, which is important at the moment.”
Espargaro out-qualified Smith in 11th, but was left “super angry” after a severe drop in grip with his soft rear tyre made it too “dangerous” to continue and forced him into retirement while running in the points with four laps remaining.
“I was super angry because I think we worked well this weekend and did a lot of laps with the tyres front and rear, and we put the Soft options for the race thinking it would be ok,” said Espargaro, who has only scored once since his comeback from his Brno injury at Misano.
“For some reason after six, seven laps it started to drop and I couldn't open the throttle. After a few more laps it was dangerous to ride the bike so I had to stop.
“I don't know what else to say. We made all the processes and procedures to know the tyre 100% but it looks like it can be a lottery. We’ll talk to Michelin and try to learn from this.”
