Cal Crutchlow apologised for his team after leaving them with an extensive repair job after Friday Practice at Laguna Seca. The Briton was sixth fastest but crashed at high speed during the afternoon, wrecking his first bike. Despite the error, Crutchlow was reasonably happy with his pace and still sees room for improvement.
“Today didn’t really go according to plan because this afternoon I had a silly crash. It was my own fault and we have to look at the data to fully understand what happened. I didn’t feel I did anything different in that corner to other laps but we will have to check. I’ve got a small cut on my right leg but fortunately nothing worse because it was a fast crash. I am sorry to my Monster Yamaha Tech 3 crew though because they will be busy tonight fixing up the bike. I am still reasonably happy because I was able to go back out again and gain a bit of time and in both sessions I was inside the top six, so we are pretty competitive. We need to calm the bike down a little bit but I will sit down with my crew tonight and come up with a plan that I’m sure will help me stay challenging inside the top six for the rest of the weekend.”
Monster Yamaha Tech 3 teammate Andrea Dovizioso was a quarter of a second ahead in fifth and stayed out of trouble but the Italian admitted concern with the 0.933s gap to the leaders.
“It has been a positive start to the weekend but the gap to the front is quite big. The second session was a bit strange because after the red flag there was a lot of traffic on track in the final stages and it was hard to get a clear lap in. I could have possibly done the same time as Ben (Spies) but certainly not the low 21s the top three were doing. My aim for this afternoon was to get closer to Ben and we managed that. I was almost 0.7s behind him this morning but only 0.3s this afternoon, so that is a good step forward. We improved the bike so I am satisfied with the work the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team did today. We still have some margin to improve and I am looking forward to the rest of the weekend.”
