LCR Honda man Cal Crutchlow had to revise his riding style for today’s MotoGP qualifying session in Qatar in order to compensate for the problems he is having with the RC213V’s hit-and-miss engine braking system.
Crutchlow has been struggling with the system ever since the unified software was introduced and suffered a crash when it simply didn’t do what he was expecting yesterday. The factory Repsol Honda team have found a fix but the Isle of Man resident’s squad can’t apply it in the desert.
“We found a little something today, but we didn’t really change too much on the bike. I just had to compensate a lot for everything that’s happening with the engine-braking on the bike. I just tried to ride in a completely different way – not because of the tyres, because my riding style of carrying a lot of corner speed suits them – but I had to change a lot because we can’t really use the rear brake at the moment,” said Crutchlow.
“There’s something really wrong with the engine-braking control system that we can’t fix here. The factory team have been able to do something, but we will hopefully be able to in a few races time.
“We’re happy enough today, although not too much with the qualifying because we could easily have been further up but I got held up. I believe I could have easily done a 1’54 and been on the front two rows, so I’m disappointed for that, but overall it was a lot better day than yesterday. My pace for the race is not too bad and I think we can run a good race tomorrow if we get away well.”