Britain’s Bradley Smith is to focus on his corner entry technique at this weekend’s Motorland Aragon MotoGP round as that is where he believes he is losing speed.

After studying data from the factory Movistar team, Smith says that he and team-mate Pol Espargaro are in good shape on corner exit but need to stop the rear sliding on the way into turns and breaking traction for too long.

“We’re trying to keep rear contact more than anything. The key thing is breaking traction and you have to wait for it to come back, that waiting point is where we lose time so the idea is to not break traction in the first place,” said Smith, speaking at Aragon.

“The idea is you take the bike to the limit of its traction and then you have to hold just below that, otherwise you’re waiting to get it back for five metres, so it’s finding the right rhythm of going up as far as you can and then bringing it back down.

“This is why you don’t see the factory team backing in as much. Pol and I slide and have to wait for it to come back into line before we can do something else. On corner exit, there isn’t a lot to be gained, everyone is picking up the bike and using the tyre to the maximum, you can’t really lose too much time, that is why the brake area is key for us.

“Our weakness and focus is corner entry, this is where most of the laptime will come from. We haven’t got the best out of our package yet, we have got more leeway in our package so we have to get the best out of that.”