Fresh from taking his first ever 125cc World Championship points, with a brilliant ride in front of his home fans at the British Grand Prix, 15-year-old Repsol Honda rider Bradley Smith tells all in his Crash.net column...
What a weekend I’ve had at
Donington. A home race, hot as any Spanish mid-summer’s day, my first points in the world championship and the first rookie in the 125 class to do that this year. Brilliant! It feels really good.
Friday was the key really as we clicked into it straight away even though I don’t have that much of a home advantage knowing the track; my last time racing here was September last year for the record. Anyway, I ended up 11th on a 1min 39 so that was good.
Friday qualifying in the afternoon saw me all pumped up for it, but I lost out in the last quarter around the Melbourne Loop leaving me about 0.3secs off my ideal time if I’d strung all of my best segments together. The problem around that last section was the feeling mid corner, especially through Goddards. It was very difficult.
Saturday morning was a bit of a silly one. I got too confident and went out with a bit of an attitude that said it was going to be a bit easy. Whoops... That didn’t work and I ended up off by 0.5 seconds on my ideal time so that showed me... They all gave me a bit of a hurry up once we’d analysed things! That left me with everything to do in final qualifying. The first run was not that great, but then for the first time this year I got a time together with new tyres.
