Yamaha’s Cal Crutchlow is enjoying his return to competitive action at the AustrianGP but says so far, there are no plans to continue for the rest of the 2021 MotoGP season.

When questioned on his future, regarding the controversy and fate of current Monster Energy rider Maverick Viñales, the Brit dismissed the circulating rumours that he would be the direct replacement from Silverstone onwards.

“No, it’s not true,” Crutchlow said bluntly when asked if he was racing for Yamaha for the rest of the year.

“The situation is, I haven’t even discussed it with Lin [Jarvis], or Maio [Meregalli] at all,” he said before continuing. “Yes, of course I’m a contracted Yamaha rider. I’m sure I will discuss some things with Lin and Maio in due course. I have a great relationship with both Lin and Maio and [Takahiro] Sumi and Yamaha. It’s going very well.

“I’m pleased with the way we’re working, it’s been very difficult the last two weekends, but I’m actually quite confident in the way that I’m riding, I feel quite good and now, maybe if I did have to do some more, then I will be more up to speed, especially after hopefully what we found today.

“I wanted to be a test rider. So does that mean I’ll be testing/racing testing, or does it mean I’ll be testing, because it’s not possible to do both. In my eyes, it’s not possible to do both because of the schedule I have for the rest of the year. The schedule for the rest of the year testing is, not hectic or busy, but you can’t do the races and the tests that we want to do, in my eyes.

“But as I said before, I haven’t spoken to them about it. We don’t know when I was supposed to test the ‘22 bike, all these things anyway so in the moment, even with the tests, I know that I’m testing, but what am I testing? Because if I ride a ’21 at the test then I can also maybe potentially ride a ’21 bike here, but I wanted to be a test rider. If I wanted to race I would have raced, but I don’t know all the options available.

“I didn’t sign a contract to race the whole rest of the year. Yes, as we know I had something in there about replacing Yamaha riders but replacing for the rest of the year is another story.

“We’ve got a good working relationship with Yamaha, we’ll discuss it and I think we will all choose the right thing and first and foremost I will speak to my family before I do anything else. But I don’t know, honestly speaking, whether a race weekend schedule is going to be any more than what my testing schedule would be anyway. So, I don’t know, we will discuss it in due course, as I said, that’s all I have to say.”

Reflecting on his current role and performance during Friday’s two proactive sessions - once again set under opposing conditions due to a flash storm just as FP2 was about to commence = Crutchlow admitted he was enjoying the experience and the progress made with his YZR-M1.

“Yes, [today was] not too bad. Same as last week. I feel we need to improve in the wet and the dry but I think that after the FP2 today we’ve finally understood what maybe our problem has been over the last two weeks. We had obviously our problem with the rear tyre last week, it was very, very strange about the situation and it seems that after FP2 we think we have found what the problem was, which is good news.”

“In the first race weekend, I was actually really enjoying myself. The first day I was a bit shocked. Even though the speed of the bike is not the best, as we all know, in a straight line, but it felt like a rocket ship when I jumped on it because I haven’t ridden anything for five months.

“We have a problem with the bike, and I couldn’t understand why, and I’ve always been a guy that can understand why - maybe I couldn’t go faster but I could understand why. Until now I couldn’t understand why, but now we do. So I was getting into this like, I can’t go any faster, I need to start improving but the reality is I don’t. I’m a test rider and so yeah I did enjoy it. I enjoy to ride motorcycles and that’s why I wanted to continue testing this year because I enjoy riding a motorcycle at speed.

“If I spend more time on the bike, of course I can go faster, but can I be competitive? It’s a long time to be off. There’s only one guy that we’ve seen off this long I think and that’s, Marc, and Marc Marquez is Marc Marquez. He is riding, basically, with one arm, and still going really, really well as we know. So, yes I can be more competitive, of course, because the more you ride the more you’re going to get the feeling.

“These guys are riding every week or training every week - you see how much they ride a motorcycle. I never rode the motorcycle when I was full time racing so I’m not going to do it now. Of course, I wanted to do some more tests but unfortunately they were cancelled. I would have been in a better speed and better way if I had been testing, of course. The problem is they’re going so fast.

“My lap times I was doing today in free practice one, and also last week, were not bad compared to what I did last year, and I’m in last position! That’s the reality. You never forget how to ride and it’s so funny how fast it does come back, but it’s not easy.”