Britain’s Bradley Smith is preparing for grip problems at this weekend’s Jerez MotoGP round and says he may have to adjust his riding style when the surface ‘turns to ice’ in between morning and afternoon sessions.

And the Monster Yamaha man will be able to go searching for grip his own way after revealing that his team is now given much more free rein to go their own way with setup instead of sticking to Yamaha’s hard and fast rules.

“Between the morning and afternoon sessions, the track turns to ice. Last year in the race it was horrific, if you look at the laptimes it was terrible. We are just preparing ourselves for a weekend like we had in Argentina where we are going to suffer to load the tyre to have grip all the time, but that is down to the rider and electronics to figure out. We might just have to ride in a different way,” said Smith, speaking at Jerez.

“I don’t think the hard tyre is of no use, I think it is alright and I don’t believe there is a big difference between the soft and hard. They base their allocation from what they used last year. I think we have two race options.

“We rely a lot more on the track grip than the Honda does. The Honda and Ducati seem to search for grip more than we do. It also depends on track abrasion, it not necessarily dependant on temperature. It’s a bit more scientific.

“Although Jerez is fast and flowing, there are a lot of places here where you can go to maximum angle then pick it up quite quickly so Hondas don’t seem to be affected as much as we are. There are five ways to ride a Honda and let’s say two to ride a Yamaha. And before Valentino’s resurgence, there was one.

"They are slowly allowing us to play a little bit more and figure out a little bit more how to ride these bikes, rather than Jorge’s style. Because they realize at the moment it’s not working. Which is why I think I am going a little bit better this year than in the past.The bike is changing and they are allowing us to change things. We have more rein to find our own way.”