Arriving on the Sepang route, Cal Crutchlow proclaimed to anyone who would listen that he was going to jump with relish into the unknown. The Briton in fact knew nothing of what Honda was going to have in store for him for this restart after two months of break. In fact, the LCR driver was entitled to the new engine in his chassis from last year rejected by Márquez et Pedrosa last season. Two HRC drivers he dominated at the start of three days of testing in Malaysia.
The last holdouts are now convinced of this. It is not by chance that Cal Crutchlow is a two-time Grand Prix winner. For the resumption of hostilities in MotoGP, the Englishman was the fastest of the five Hondas in the running, allowing himself to get ahead of the two official riders, including a certain Marc Márquez Reigning World Champion relegated to 169 thousandths.
From his sixth place of the day to 0.889s from the missile Stoner equipped with a Ducati, Crutchlow did not shy away from his pleasure: “ we tried different configurations of the new engine with some electronic adjustments. For the moment everything is well. And our work plan is going perfectly ».
That said, there was a setback as he explains on crash.net : " we had two tires that behaved strangely. And I think Valentino and Dovi also experienced this problem. Once Dovizioso changed his tires he was very quick. We lost a little time because of that because we had to check where the problem was coming from. From the front or the back. But hey, it's okay, it hasn't been a bad day ».
On the chassis side, he specifies: “ I don't know if there is another chassis available. I don't even ask myself the question. I'm happy with the one I have, so why change? Jack Miller and Tito Rabat have the same. The factory drivers may have gone another direction, I don't know ". More tomorrow.
