Bradley Smith is slowly losing his grip on the Monster Yamaha contract for 2015 and maybe heading for a seat swap with Aleix Espargaro after a weekend in Germany that saw him crash five times.

The British rider fell twice on Friday, twice on Saturday and then again in the race as he tried to follow Valentino Rossi past the massively-slow Mike Di Meglio, hit some water and ended in the gravel. Smith re-mounted to finish in 19th.

At the start of the season, Smith stated that he would have to be the leading satellite rider ‘by some margin’ to have any chance of a factory seat in 2015. Not too long ago, he said he wouldn’t hire himself with his results and now, with another poor weekend, he is staring down the barrel of having to go down to an Open class ride while Espargaro slots in alongside his Yamaha-contracted brother Pol.

“Having eighth position pace isn’t acceptable and you have to squeeze that little bit more. This weekend I was able to find where it was but got caught out in a few situations. At the end of the day you’re in a situation where performance is everything and you have to show you have the ability to take it to that next level,” said Smith, speaking at the track.

“I have shown that I have the speed, I just need to iron out the mistakes. Maybe this weekend wasn’t the one to do it. This track has caught out a lot of riders and yeah, there wasn’t a lot of grip. In the race I was running six steps more traction control so the Friday highsides could be down to not enough TC, the rest I take full responsibility for. The great thing is the team can see the potential, they trust the decisions I made in the race.

“Valentino passed Barbera into turn one and I tried between three and four, and as I cut back up the hill I touched the white line. Obviously, the water had trickled down and was still damp. Once I remounted I had the pace for fifth with a damaged bike. It’s another if, but and maybe but I take some support in that I was fast and don’t give up.”