Oxfordshire's Bradley Smith set aside the disappointment of his Spanish MotoGP display to finish third in the first day of testing for next year.

Smith, who crashed on the way to finishing 14th in the season finale at Valenica on Sunday, quickly turned his attentions to preparations for 2015.

The 23-year-old, from Forest Hill, near Oxford, completed an enormous tally of 59 laps around the same 4005m circuit as he embarked on a general test of the new specification of his Yamaha YZR-M1, as well as electronics and a new Bridgestone rear tyre.

Smith, who ended his second year in MotoGP in eighth in the championship standings, produced a best time of 1min 31.204secs.

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It left him 0.229secs behind Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP), who recorded 1.30.975, with Smith’s Monster Yamaha Tech3 teammate, Pol Espargaro, second in 1.31.118.

Smith said: “Today was a really strong start and the great thing was that we got to try the new 2015 bike.

“To be honest, we just used a base setting and didn’t experiment too much with any modifications as I just wanted to run on the bike in order to understand it more.

“I was also able to test a new Bridgestone rear tyre, which worked well, and we tried some new electronic parts and upgrades from Yamaha that were also positive.

“There were no negatives today and in fact we have already improved the lap time from qualifying as well as consistently riding in the 1.31’s.

“We undertook some really productive work, but there are still two days left, so we will see what happens.

“If it rains it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing as it will give me the chance to test the new bike in wet conditions.”

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