After a promising Saturday for LCR Castrol Honda‘s Cal Crutchlow, the penultimate round of the MotoGP World Championship couldn’t have ended any worse for the British rider.
Starting from fifth, Crutchlow dropped outside the top ten within the opening few laps of the Malaysian Grand Prix, eventually dropping down to fifteenth.
Crutchlow fought his way back up to twelfth position before a crash at turn 15 ended the Britons Grand Prix.
Speaking to media after the race, Crutchlow said: “Today was a difficult race, we’re very disappointed with the result of crashing out of the Malaysian Grand Prix. Today I got a really bad start and on the first lap found myself really far back in the field already. I tried to make progress and I was in a group that eventually finished around eighth place, but I had a bad feeling with the tyres today and didn’t feel good grip from the track or with our bike setting”.
Despite the crash, Crutchlow remains upbeat ahead of the final round of the season, after making a breakthrough with his RC213 v at the Japanese and Australian Grand Prix’s, “Over the weekend I felt we’d made progress and could have had a good result today, but after the bad start I struggled to have the pace of going with the front guys.”
Crutchlow’s race ended with a final corner crash with six laps remaining, Crutchlow was not the only rider to fall at the difficult final corner over the weekend. “With the crash, I made a small mistake in the braking as I was trying everything to find the grip with the front tyre and unfortunately I locked the front. But we’d had a good last few races and now we look forward to the season finale in Valencia.”
Crutchlow’s teammate Johann Zarco was also punted out of a top ten finish after being taken out of the race by Suzuki‘s Joan Mir.
