Britain's Bradley Smith said he was frustrated to be beaten by the Ducati of Nicky Hayden after holding him off for almost the entire Silverstone MotoGP round by choosing the softer Bridgestone tyre option proved to be an error.
Smith went well in the colder morning warm-up and didn't want to change setup for the race but as the track and ambient temperature rose, he lost some edge grip on the softer tyre over what he would have had with the harder option run by all of the top six riders bar Alvaro Bautista.
"I didn't really race the Ducatis, they stuck to me the whole way. Dovi passed me, crashed, then Nicky passed me and tried to crash about three times on the last lap. It was one of those ones where I tried really hard to break away but there were point on the track where I would pull them, then they would be back on me and I could always hear the Ducati growl in the slow corners," said Smith, speaking at Silverstone.
"It was quite a frustrating race to be honest. We found something this morning in warm-up. We knew it would change a lot when the temperature came up because we have been chasing our tails all weekend and we didn't want to change for the race so we kept to our plan and the soft tyre wasn't a good option.
"There was a lot of movement and spinning, especially on the left side of the tyre, and we just lacked a little. It's a reality check I suppose, coming from Brno where everything went well. It just proves there are some weekends where you can't find they key. It's important not to crash on those weekends and use it as a test, somewhat.
"It's difficult to find positives but we finished and gave good feedback and data to the team. I was the only Yamaha rider to use the soft tyre to that helps in the Yamaha debrief which throws another option in there. What we can take from this weekend is just that.
"It's frustrating to be beaten by Ducati and finish 36s behind but if we look at qualifying pace we were 1.8s away so we were never going to be close. I didn't feel that I left anything out on the track."
