Ducati’s Cal Crutchlow believes he would have been in with a shot of a fourth-placed finish in today’s Sepang MotoGP clash had his Desmosedici not ground to a halt with an ‘electrical’ problem on lap six.

The Isle of Man resident said that in morning warm-up, his speed on a tyre that had done more than race distance was better than that of Bradley Smith and Stefan Bradl, and he thinks that he could have grabbed a top-four slot in Malaysia.

“Five laps I managed before we had to pull off. It seems something electrical happened with the bike and one of the wires got cut on a moving part of the bike so it’s disappointing. My team did a great job this weekend and I really had a good pace,” said Crutchlow, speaking at Sepang.

“I felt the pace the fourth and fifth-place guys did was really weak and we could have been a lot stronger than that. I don’t think we could have fought for a podium, or been close, but we definitely could have been in the top four.

“We have got my pace back in the last three races. We need to take the positives away. We were a lot faster than the guys around us. I didn’t qualify well as I had a problem. In morning warm-up I used race tyres that had done more than race distance and I did a lot faster times than they were able to do at the end of the race. I’m gutted we didn’t take benefit from that.”

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