Ducati’s Cal Crutchlow decided that carrying on after his crash in the Brno MotoGP yesterday would have been taking an unnecessary risk after he damaged his shoulder and re-joined the race a minute behind the field with no hope of championship points.
The Isle of Man resident missed a braking marker early in the race, ran into the gravel and pulled his shoulder trying to keep hold of the Desmosedici before having to jump off before he hit a wall.
“I made a mistake I lost the braking marker as I had ten guys in front of me, same as in Jerez, so I ran out of room and went straight into the gravel. There was no problem with the brakes, I just braked in the same place as would have done if I was alone. I had to avoid Aleix Espargaro as I was close to avoiding him. If was my own fault. If I had gone left, I would have taken out the guy in front of him, which I think was Bradl and I have done that once this year already, so I didn’t want to do it again,” said Crutchlow, speaking at the track.
“I thought I was going to stop before the edge of the track but I was on the dirty part, I tried to hold on to it and pulled my shoulder. Just before the wall I jumped off, well, tipped over. I decided to come in after that because I had some power problems with the bike initially, it was going up and down, and I was concerned there was something wrong with the engine. My shoulder was hurting and I didn’t take a risk like in Texas where I broke my hand when I was already a minute behind.
“Immediately when I got back on the bike it didn’t know where I was on the circuit. Obviously, as it had been turned off and on again, it didn’t know where it was so I had some problems for a couple of laps. I was never going to catch the guy in front and for sure I wouldn’t have got a point and I would have been taking an unnecessary risk.”










