Monster Yamaha's Bradley Smith benefited from the clash between Nicky Hayden and Andrea Dovizioso (click here for story) to nick eighth place in yesterday's Indianapolis MotoGP encounter, saying it was a blessing.

The young Briton managed to fire into fourth place ahead of team-mate Cal Crutchlow off the start but then slipped backwards as he his rear tyre lost the plot early on but was handed eighth place by 0.011s when the works Ducati's tangled.

"Nicky got his own back today and it was a blessing for me as I got eighth. The Ducatis are my friends at the moment as they keep giving me positions. Dovi left the door open, Nicky took it. It is a move that we all know is possible but was never going to work," said Smith, speaking at Indianapolis.

Crutchlow followed Smith for a while in the early stages and said Smith looked tense. The Oxfordshire man reckons this is down to setup problems at the start of the race, something that Crutchlow knows about all too well.

"I can't ride for the first five laps. The bike doesn't react like we need it to, I have a lot of moments, I look as scary as can be, I certainly wouldn't want to be following me because even on the bike it feels a little bit worrying. It is something that we need to improve on.

"It's a lot easier from fourth than eighth, ninth and tenth. It feels a lot calmer and the plan for the next races is to do the same. In warm-up were were fine, we didn't change the bike a whole bunch but we had a lot of rear chatter and the tyre looked the worse it has been all weekend.

"We had done two race distances during the weekend and it looked brand new. Normally, the second half of the race is where I go faster but today I got gradually slower. This one was out of our hands. We didn't mess up, we did a great job as a team."