Britain's Bradley Smith fought his way to a magnificent fourth place in this morning's Valencia MotoGP 125cc race after clawing his way up through the field.

The youngster started from the head of row two and was in with the leaders through turn one, but found himself boxed in through turn two and came out in ninth, leaving him a lot of work to do as the leaders went away.

With two laps gone, Stefan Bradl highsided taking Sergio Gadea with him, which promoted Smith two places to seventh and one lap later, Gabor Talmasci sat up with mechanical problems.

After four laps, Smith managed to get to the front of his group, got his head down and raced the track, putting in lap times that were quicker than the two in front and managed to pull himself up to the leading four.

With 12 laps to go, Smith found himself only a second off the leaders as Mike DiMeglio and Simone Corsi battled for the lead, slowing each other up. Nicolas Terol, meanwhile, was towing Sandro Cortese up to the leading pair.

With ten laps to go, Smith made the leading group a five-biker and with only six laps to go, Smith put a great move on Cortese and Terol to snatch third place. Two laps later, however, Terol got back past the Oxfordshire youngster and put a gap on him.

Smith has to settle for fourth place at his last race with the Polaris World team, but only crossed the line quarter of a second behind eventual winner, Corsi with Terol and DiMeglio rounding out the podium.

Scott Redding finished in eighth after a race-long scrap with Tommy Koyama. Danny Webb crashed out unhurt with 18 laps to go.

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