Monster Yamaha's Cal Crutchlow ended a difficult first day at Sepang's MotoGP round with confidence after setting an 'easy' laptime good enough for fifth place on the timesheet.
The British rider, who had almost identical pace to team-mate Andrea Dovizioso, was just over half a second slower than top man Dani Pedrosa and says he wasn't pushing as the track was greasy in the morning session while he didn't bother in the wet afternoon period.
"It was a shame the rain meant I didn't get to go out on track for the second session because I had some work to do to improve the bike," said the Isle of Man resident.
"I felt confident right from the start this morning and even though I wasn't pushing that hard because the track was quite greasy, the lap time still came quite easy. Hopefully tomorrow we will have better luck with the weather and we can focus on improving the bike for the race.”
