Bradley Smith praised his Monster Yamaha Tech3 team after the Oxfordshire rider ended a difficult weekend with a superb fourth place in the Shell Malaysia MotoGP at Sepang.

The result helped him further consolidate sixth place in the championship standings.

Smith extended his lead over Ducati rider Andrea Dovizioso to 18 points ahead of the final round at Valencia on November 8.

The 24-year-old had struggled for pace in the early part of the weekend.

Smith, from Forest Hill, near Oxford, had to go through the first round of qualifying after missing out on the top ten in practice.

But upon making the second session, he set the ninth fastest time to start on the third row.

At the midpoint of the race, Smith found himself in sixth and catching fellow Briton Cal Crutchlow and Dovizioso.

And on lap 11 he shot past Crutchlow to move up to fourth, where he opened up a comfortable gap to finish just a place off the podium.

Smith said: “Finishing this race in fourth position is a fantastic result, especially after such a challenging weekend.

“Going from 14th at the end of day one to fourth on Sunday highlights the great effort by the team and I must thank them for this.

“In all honesty, we really struggled in the last few days, but we just kept on trying to improve step by step.”

Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa rode brilliantly to take his 51st GP victory in front of 82,000 fans.

Pedrosa led from flag to flag to win by 3.612s in hot and humid conditions.

But his victory was overshadowed by a clash between championship leader Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez that saw the latter crash out.

Race organisers reviewed the incident after the race and awarded Rossi three penalty points.

He will also be forced to start the next race from the back of the grid.