CWM LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow has continued his pace from the second Sepang MotoGP test, ending day one in Qatar seventh on the timesheets and a little over half a second off the pace of Andrea Iannone.
The British rider only used half his allocation of tyres in the desert yesterday and still managed a 1’55.837 to finish just 0.009s behind former world champion Jorge Lorenzo on the works Yamaha.
“I felt confident riding and I only used two sets of the four tyres available to us so this is good for the other days. We worked on more of a ‘long-distance’ setting for the bike – we weren’t really looking for a lap-time and I feel confident that we could make the lap time if we really needed it. Tomorrow will be the day we’ll do some longer runs though to go with it,” said Crutchlow.
“We had to be a bit careful with the track conditions today because between 4pm and 6.30pm the track was too hot, and we’d be wasting tyres. Then from about 10pm the track had a lot of dew on it. We have to be careful of the situation as regards that and just stick to our plan which is to work from seven until ten, which is why we didn’t do as many laps as we wanted. But we’re happy enough.”
