Cal Crutchlow sees no end in sight to his current woes after qualifying a lowly fifteenth for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. The home favourite had hoped to make his way through Q1 but missed out by seven tenths of a second and speaking to media afterwards, he explained that the recurring problems with the Ducati GP14 are making his life difficult and there is little hope of a change tomorrow.
“It was the same as every other day, disappointing, not fast enough and not able to keep pace with the other Ducati guys. I don’t think I’ve ever been so slow and so uncompetitive around Silverstone. I was probably faster with the Superbike! It’s disappointing but I don’t have a feeling with the bike and the tyres at the moment and I don’t see a way to improve it by tomorrow morning. Hopefully we’ll see something in the data later and be able to improve but we’re too far away from the other Ducati riders and the other riders in front of me in qualifying.”
“I scrapped the second run because I had a massive vibration with the soft rear tyre. Even if I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t have been quickest in the session anyway but I wasn’t going to take the risk because I almost crashed three or four times in two laps with the second tyre. After one lap it feels like the tyres are 30 laps old and I’m just rolling around trying to find the edge grip. I can’t carry the lean angle.”
Crutchlow’s cause wasn’t helped by traffic towards the end of Q1 and the Briton was critical of the his rivals’ tactics, not for the first time.
“There were people all over the track like usual. I don’t know why they’re following me because I’m not fast enough, go and follow someone else! They’ll probably catch me up and I’ll be in the way. At the end of the day, they’re playing the game perfectly and they’re too interested in following people like I’ve always said.”
