Ducati’s Cal Crutchlow wrapped up his Sepang MotoGP test by saying he was encouraged by the progress made over the three days which saw him drop his laptimes by almost two seconds to end 1.5s off Marc Marquez.
The Briton freely admits the final laptime compared to Marquez doesn’t look great but he is pleased with the progress made in Malaysia and will now work towards bridging the gap to team-mate Andrea Dovizioso, who was seven tenths quicker in the final analysis.
“I am pleased. I know the position looks absolutely dreadful and it is, and a long way from Dovi but overall we are quite consistent and a lot faster than we were yesterday. We found some things with the bike but I did the laptime at the wrong time of the day. I did it at quarter past 12 and it was 15 degrees hotter than when everyone else did their laptime, as such. I did one at the end of the day but had I done that lap at the start of the day I would have been where Andrea was,” said Crutchlow, speaking at Sepang.
“I’m not too concerned about the laptime, we all know I can do a lap, I'm normally a good one-lap rider. We seem to have found some things with the bike that I am more pleased about. You're able to push the bike a little more, it seems the limit is a lot more than the GP13, which is good, from what I know of it - I put it on the floor twice but with so much less brake pressure and lean angle that you get with this bike now, so that's a good thing.
“We have still a lot of issues that we have to improve, grip, wheelie, we have a lot of vibration that we can't fix here. It needs news parts, time and the guys to go back to Bologna to fix that. Overall, I am happy. The laptimes are crap but the times I was doing on average today was not far off what I was doing last year, just everyone else has gone faster, which is fair enough. Dovi has proved the laptime is possible on that bike. He only did one really good laptime but it's encouraging.”
Looking at the race run analysis, Crutchlow believes Marquez is currently a country mile ahead of the pack, including second and third placed men Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo.
“We are a long way off Marc, but so is everyone. His race simulation, everyone is 20 seconds off, I can tell you that now. At the end of a race, they would be ten seconds off, minimum. Dani is seven tenths off his team-mate, I am seven tenths off my team-mate.
“We haven't had three fantastic days, but we have had three days of improvement every day. I can't go away from here disheartened. There was no point in doing a race simulation as we have nothing to gain at the moment. I think ten laps we could stay in the 2'01s, high, but at the end of 20 laps I don't know where we would be.”
