Britain’s Cal Crutchlow has admitted his near-factory spec Honda RC213V is the hardest bike he has ever had to ride in his MotoGP career but added that in some places it is fantastic.
The CWM-LCR rider is full of praise for the bike and says what yo can get away with on corner entry is unbelievable but he and the team need to work on finding some corner-exit grip consistency to match his competition.
“Honda make a good motorbike but it’s hard to ride. It is a lot more physically demanding than any other MotoGP bike I have ridden but it will get less demanding the more you learn the bike as well. It’s tough to ride and tough to get your head around because in all honesty, Dani and Marc have different styles, so which way to go is another thing,” said Crutchlow, speaking at Sepang.
“Marc used to much rear brake and Dani much less so. One has the bike completely sideways, the other quite inline so it is finding a balance and finding what I am happy with - it’s more laps. In some areas the bike is fantastic and some areas we need to improve. Honda are working hard to get that information.
“It is special going into the corner, what you can get away with is incredible, but there are other areas need improvement. The consistency of the rear grip coming out of the corner, you have to play with the bike to get the grip. But if that’s the way you have to ride it, so be it.”
So far, Crutchlow has dropped his best laptime from 2’01.713 yesterday to a 2’01.058 today, which puts him a little over a second away from fastest man Jorge Lorenzo but under a second lower than Marc Marquez.
“We’re trying to find some consistency from the engine braking control system, we don’t understand it so well, and the feedback I am giving is probably a little strange but it is comparing to what I have been used to. I think the other guys ride in a different way in that area - one has more, one has less in that area. There are some improvements and the laptime was better today.
“I started this morning on a used tyre from yesterday and I only used one set of tyres today. We need to make the bike more consistent because from lap to lap we can see things in the data for no apparent reason. For example, in one corner we will have a slide but on the next lap, we won’t have a slide with more throttle or more lean angle, it’s a bit alien at the minute.
“We have tried a lot of things with the bike’s stiffness to make me more comfortable but it can also be affected by how many laps are on the tyre. We are taking it steady but we are quicker and more consistent than yesterday.”
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