By Mike Nicks

Bradley Smith this morning became the most frequent crasher in 125cc GPs, when he came off his Polaris World Aprilia for the 13th time this season during the free practice session. That must hurt - the rider's morale and the team's budget, as well as Bradley's 17-year-old bones.

Before he binned it on a damp track, Bradley was joint most frequent faller in the 125cc class from another Brit, Danny Webb on the DeGraaf Aprilia. Now Danny is left in second place with 12 crashes (and we're only halfway through the tenth round of the year, I remind you).

Amongst the MotoGP runners, Randy de Puniet is top of the crashers' league, with 14 incidents on the LCR Honda. Alex de Angelis is runner-up with ten falls from the San Carlos Gresini Honda. James Toseland, who came off his Tech 3 Yamaha yesterday, has fallen nine times so far this year.

The king of all crashers though, comes from the 250cc class. Mattia Pasini, the 22-year-old Italian, has laid his Polaris World Aprilia down 15 times. Polaris World again: their carbon-fibre supplier must love this team…

There are two ways to look at crashing. Some in the paddock say that great riders of the future often crash a lot before they become champions. They point to ferocious competitors such as Casey Stoner and Mick Doohan.

On the other hand, the frequent fallers have to decide at some stage not to keep losing it, or they're never going to win championships. I side with the latter view.