Cal Crutchlow wasn’t concerned by a crash during a challenging second day of testing with Ducati in Valencia. The Briton lost the front end of the GP13 at turn eight but didn’t let that detract from another day of acclimatisation with the Bologna squad.
“Obviously we’re just getting to grips with the Ducati, riding around doing as much as possible. We didn’t do a lot of laps, but made a lot of changes. The team’s working good, they’re listening to my comments a lot, and Gigi is here gathering information. It was a more challenging day for me today, but positive in the end. We didn’t go as fast as yesterday, but would’ve gone faster as we changed the bike really drastically at the end of the day and seemed to have found something, but it was a compromise, as I had rear grip but little front grip and crashed! I think we could’ve been in the mid-31s if we had pushed.”
Teammate Andrea Dovizioso worked with updated electronics today to accommodate the reduction in fuel allowance for 2014 but feels it is too early to draw any conclusions about the updated Ducati.
“We tested a new frame today, but there isn’t really much difference so we didn’t improve a lot. We also tested a different fairing and some different settings, things we’ve already tested but this time to give feedback to Gigi [Dall’Igna]. The lap time is quite fast, but everyone was quite fast because the conditions were good. At the end it was difficult to make a lap time because the sun was very low. I’m happy about the lap time at the end but the bike is similar to during the weekend.”
