Britain’s Bradley Smith wasn’t too upset over losing the final day of MotoGP testing in Qatar as he has a lot of race simulation data already in the can and says he only needs to find three-tenths of a second.

The Monster Yamaha man is evenly matched with his team-mate Pol Espargaro, the pair ending day two split by just 0.10s in Smith’s favour, and he is confident if he can run high 1’55s laps in the desert floodlights, he will be in the mix, he just needs to find a third of a second.

"It’s unfortunate that the rain has stopped the final day of testing, but honestly, we have already completed a race simulation in Sepang so it’s not a huge loss. I also did one here last year in the test so we have the information we need. In addition, we did a lot of long runs on the same tyre and know how the compound behaves after a lot of laps,” said Smith.

“The lap times are close so the first race will be interesting and I’m truly happy with what we have achieved. The bike is working really well at the moment and we have two or three ideas that we will try in ten days when we return here. If we can run high 1’55 laps in the race then we are where we want to be.

“So at the moment, we need to find about 0.3 each lap, then we will be happy. I’ve really enjoyed the preseason this year, ridden a lot of laps and tried a lot of things but now the nice part of the year starts where you can score points. The competition is back on and it will be a good one."