Britain’s Cal Crutchlow went back to basics with setup on the first day of MotoGP practice at Aragon and says that although he didn’t make it into the top ten, the pace behind the works Honda and Yamaha riders is much closer than it looks on paper.
Crutchlow ended the day in 12th place, one behind Scott Redding, but felt no difference in grip between the hard and medium tyre options, and said that he is chasing settings at the Spanish track more than other teams.
“I felt not too bad today. We went back to basics with the setting a little bit, back to one we used earlier in the year to gain some speed. I don’t think we went slower, in a couple of my laps I made some mistakes. We need to understand the bike a little bit better at the circuit, it is a long lap and where you can lose a lot of time so we were way too far away this morning in the braking points and some other things,” said Crutchlow, speaking at the track.
“At one point, I was losing six-tenths to Marc. The Honda is difficult to get your head around at some circuits but at others it works great immediately. This track takes some dialling in and we are chasing settings more than other teams so we need to work and today it didn’t work like we wanted to. My overall pace is not that bad, not as bad as it looks on paper and there are five guys in front of us with the soft tyre.
“This is a good circuit for me usually, I was missing some braking performance, I couldn’t carry any corner speed and on the exit the bike was running wide. It’s not just the bike, it is me also. I think it is closer than it looks. I felt no improvement from my soft rear tyre to my hard, which is really strange. You expect a jump. It has been a learning day for electronics as well as setup.”
