LCR Honda presented the new liveries of the RC213V which will be entrusted to Cal Crutchlow and Takaaki Nakagami. The HRC satellite team will once again aim to mark the top of the ranking reserved for satellite teams. The Briton can boast of a bike similar to that of Marc Marquez and Jorge Lorenzo. This will be his fifth season with the team. Lucio Cecchinello and, while waiting for the start of the championship, the preparation work has begun in Losail
The LCR Honda Castrol Racer driver Cal Crutchlow was the fastest Honda at the end of the Sepang tests. Despite still being on the road to recovery, after a broken ankle at Phillip Island last season, which left him off his bike for three months, he hasn't missed his return. “This is my fifth year with LCR. And I'm very happy with this situation, it's the longest stay of my life in a team. I'm looking forward to my fifth season with Lucio Cecchinello and the whole team. We all work very hard together and I hope the team will be as excited about it as I am ».
« I only tried the new bike for three days in Malaysia, so it's a bit of a different feeling than 2018. But I'm looking forward to continuing it here in Qatar and preparing for the 2019 season which starts in two weeks. My ambition for the season is to try to fight as much as possible up front. I don't know how long it will take to get there because of the injury last season. Maybe it will take me a little time to get back to my level, but I plan to stay at the forefront ».
Lucio Cecchinello, boss of LCR Honda, is impatient to continue the adventure with his Englishman: “ I think Cal will once again be one of the fastest and most competitive drivers in the championship. Despite the serious injury suffered in Australia last October, Cal never gave up and after several months of intensive training and physiotherapy, he came back strong for the Sepang test. Having completed over 150 laps, he showed in this first test how committed he was to gathering vital data for the HRC team and technicians during the development of the Spec Factory 2019 RC213V model. We look forward to working with him for the fifth consecutive year ».
Nakagami will once again be the teammate of Crutchlow with also an ambition to do well. The Japanese has in fact subscribed to the top 10 since the start of this offseason…
