Cal Crutchlow wasn't overly concerned despite finishing Friday Practice down in 15th place at Misano. The Briton was able to get straight down to business without having to learn the circuit but encountered problems getting the best out of the harder tyre today.
Despite his lowly position, the Briton was just over half a second away from the top six and feels he needs to revisit the settings from last weekend to move up the order.
“Today wasn’t an easy start to the weekend but I don’t think 15th place is a true reflection of our potential. I had a few issues with getting the hard rear tyre to work, so we’ll need to have a look at a big improvement in that area for tomorrow. I ran the same soft tyre I’d used this morning in the second session and even with 36 laps on it, I went just as quick with that as what we did with a brand new hard tyre. Lorenzo is more than 1.5s quicker on the hard tyre and I can’t get it to work, so we need to have a look at the setting and perhaps make the bike more similar to what we ran in Indianapolis. We’ll have a look at the data tonight and see what we can work out for tomorrow. I’m trying my hardest and I don’t think I’m that far away because 0.5s would put me eighth.”
Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Teammate Colin Edwards suffered similar problems on the hard tyre but overcame them to finish tenth in second practice. The American described the day as “solid” but knows there is still plenty to work on.
“Today was a solid day without being too spectacular. We rolled off the truck from Indy not terribly fast and it is always nice to come out of the blocks with a bit more speed than I did. My biggest problem today has been high-speed stability and you can lose a lot of time in the three really fast right-handers here. The front-end was also tucking quite a bit this afternoon and at times the sensation was like I was riding on a flat tyre.”
“We made some changes which we felt were going to make the bike better but we just ran out of time, so we’ll sit down tonight and look at some data and come up with a plan for tomorrow. I feel confident and reasonably comfortable and with a couple of changes to the bike for tomorrow I’m sure we can come out all guns blazing. We also need to find something to help me with the hard rear tyre. I’m lacking a bit of entry grip, so we’ll work on that too. Initially it feels fantastic but the lap times were no better. We got some ideas to get more side and entry grip with the hard tyre, so I’m sure we’ll be much faster tomorrow.”
Edwards announced on Friday evening that he continue in MotoGP next year for the new CRT outfit NGM Forward Racing. Details of the chassis are unconfirmed but the newcomers are likely to run a Yamaha R1 engine in 2012.
