Monster Yamaha’s Bradley Smith finished the Indianapolis MotoGP race in sixth place and says it feels like a big weight has been lifted off his shoulders following the crash-fest the was the Sachsenring.

The Oxfordshire youngster escaped an early melee with the Espargaro brothers and, after some initial confidence problems with a squirming front end, got his head down in the second half to reel in early leader Andrea Dovizioso.

“It’s nice to know I don’t chuck it down the road in every session after Sachsenring. We learned a lot about traction control from those crashes and this weekend we did a really god job with that. At the end of the race I had preserved my tyre really well. It’s a relief. I feel a lot of weight has been lifted off my shoulders just to show I can be there,” said Smith, speaking at the track.

“It was tough, to be honest. At the start we made a setting that was a little bit more on the front of the bike and with extra few degrees of track temperarture, the front was squirming around quite a lot, and I did lose a bit of confidence and pace.

“I got a good start but nearly wiped out with Pol on the second corner and nearly went over the handlebars. He hit his brother and then bounced back and hit me, so he was a bit of a pinball in there.

“I think Pol nearly hit Dani so let go of the brake, ran into his brother, then bounced back. It’s racing incident, I damaged his silencer quite badly and I think he was lucky to be able to carry on.

“The bike came to me, I found a rhythm and rode in the 1’33s. I got a little bit lucky with Aleix and Bradl having their coming together because that opened up the road for me but to catch Dovi and reel in Pol like I did are positive signs.

“I didn’t really perform to full potential today, but we needed that result after the last few race weekend.”