The first day of free practice for the Aragón Grand Prix in Spain was positive to say the least for the LCR Honda team as Cal Crutchlow set the third best time of the day with less than a tenth of a second separating him. of the reference time established by the official Honda rider Dani Pedrosa.
Before the start of the weekend, the 30-year-old Briton and his team thought they would encounter difficulties when exiting curves in the acceleration phases, an area in which they have struggled with the RC213V since the start of the race. season. However, having established a tune-up on their machine which seemed to suit the particularities of the requirements of the Iberian track, the first results gave them more satisfaction than they could have hoped for. Saturday's work will mainly be devoted to improving corner entries.
The Coventry native's times were remarkably impressive throughout the two 45-minute free test sessions, and after finishing this Friday as first satellite driver, his confidence is boosted to perform tomorrow and thus obtain an honorable place on the starting grid for Sunday's race which will consist of 23 laps.
Cal Crutchlow #35 – 3rd (1'48.510)
“It wouldn't have been too bad a day, but not exceptional either. My feeling on the bike is generally satisfactory and the LCR Honda team once again did a productive job since we had the opportunity to try a few elements that we had to test.”
“At the moment I am mainly facing difficulties entering corners and this is an area in which we absolutely must improve for tomorrow because I think we can save a significant amount of time by solving this problem. Deceleration will also have to be the subject of in-depth work because we are forced to take risks by forcing the front of the bike. We are relatively satisfied in the end and confident for the rest of the weekend after the way things went during this first day.”
