The LCR Honda rider saw his Aragón Grand Prix disrupted by a clutch problem and was unable to confirm his qualification on the front row.
After such a good weekend, Cal Crutchlow certainly did not expect to experience such a complicated race and must be content with a result well below his expectations.
In the top 4 of free practice, the Englishman showed great pace on Friday and Saturday and was ready to forget his mistake at Le Mans last week. Qualified on the front row, the podium seemed within his reach but that was without counting on a technical problem with the clutch which completely affected his race.
Completely missing his start, he slipped to 12th position and indeed seemed to be in difficulty throughout the first part of the race before regaining pace and overtaking drivers.
Fighting with a quartet of Ducatis until the checkered flag, he managed to have the last word over Jack Miller, Johann Zarco and Danilo Petrucci. Only Andrea Dovizioso remained ahead of him and Crutchlow ultimately finished eighth. This is much less than what he aspired to, but much better than the places he was in at the start of the race.
“We are obviously very disappointed with today’s result”, did he declare. “During the warm-up lap we encountered a problem on the back straight with the clutch slipping a lot. When I arrived on the grid I didn't know how far I was going to be able to engage it at the start because if I pushed it too much I was going to have big problems in the race. It slipped a lot in the first three laps, then it continued to decrease until the sixth lap. »
“The best result I could achieve was eighth place and I am satisfied with it after the difficulties encountered at the start. I think we did a good job. Now we have to focus on next week and keep the positive from today. »
MotoGP Aragón-1 J3: classification
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
