Although, Britain’s Bradley Smith wouldn’t actually say so, it looks very much like he was saddled with a duff rear tyre in yesterday’s Brno MotoGP race as he had a lot of wheelspin in both corner exit and down the straights.

The Monster Yamaha man had qualified on the second row and was seventh in morning warm-up but in the race he slumped to ninth after not being able to find grip. Smith’s situation was not dissimilar to that of Marc Marquez, who also struggled with rear grip and wheelspin.

“We had a decent amount of spinning, more than we had in warm-up this morning with an old tyre. Really disappointed to be honest, bike was working well and it was a good decision to go with the softer of the front tyres like Jorge and it didn’t pay off. It was spinning a lot, the traction control was doing a lot of work and losing far too much time on corner exits and down the straights,” said Smith, speaking at the track.

“It’s another situation where we have been unfortunate but that’s racing. I had good pace in warm up, we looked like we could follow the top four or at least fight with the Andreas and I didn’t change between warm-up and the race. It’s not nice to finish ninth but I rode as hard as I could and there was nothing left to give.”