Britain’s Cal Crutchlow says he and his fellow Honda riders are having to fight their RC213Vs too much at the Misano MotoGP round and a lack of corner exit grip is badly affecting lap times even though braking performance is strong.
Crutchlow ended the day down in 11th place after having to come through qualifying one but said that he had two bikes that were set up entirely differently but felt exactly the same, so his 1’33.220 was as fast as he could wrestle the LCR Honda today.
“You can see from the TV our bike is so much more unstable for some reason than the others. We used two totally different bikes that look exactly the same on TV so we need to work hard tonight, look through what we can change. It’s not about the experience the other guys have from the test, everyone has caught up now, it’s just about our package. We had two bikes that had big differences and their feeling was the same. Hopefully we have half a miracle and we can have a decent race,” said Crutchlow, speaking at Misano.
“We have a strong engine, we just can’t use it. We don’t have any grip on the exit of the corner, then we start to wheelie. From the first gears corner we have to hook gears. We gain on the braking, maybe two or three tenths at ten, we hammer them. But coming out through the kink into the next fast right. If we can make the bike go in a straight line, not fight it, it would be a lot easier.”
