Britain’s Cal Crutchlow got a massive scare at the start of yesterday’s opening MotoGP free practice session in Qatar when an oil leak almost caused a 206mph highside.
The LCR Honda man was just on the brakes for turn one when his motor let go, throwing oil on to Crutchlow’s boots and the rear tyre but the Isle of Man resident fought back to post the seventh-fastest time of the session.
"I nearly highsided going into turn one f**king 330 km/h. But honestly, for the rest of the session, I rode really shit, really scared. When you have something like that happen, it takes a while to get over,” said Crutchlow, speaking at the track.
"If you crash, and you know why you've crashed, you say, 'OK, I crashed a lap ago, I'm on my spare bike, I can go faster'. That’s not in your control, you're shitting yourself the whole time.
"But it turned out OK. I was riding bad and the lap time was not too bad considering. And I was on a bike that we'd never ridden before with those settings. It was just going to be doing two laps today, and it ended up doing the whole session."
