Cal Crutchlow will not have lasting memories of these three days of testing in Qatar, just before embarking on the 2020 campaign, on the same Losail track. He fell heavily, suffered to continue his work and he fought with a Honda 2020 which made the entire HRC go crazy. That being said, we will remember that last year, the Englishman was also languishing at the bottom of the rankings and at the end of the Qatar Grand Prix, he was on the podium...
Cal Crutchlow is in unison with Marc Márquez about the RC213V version 2020. This is a motorcycle which, rather than erasing the known faults of the latest versions, boiling down to a lack of sensations with the front, has, on the contrary, exacerbated them . Marc Márquez even returned to the 2019 opus to take stock. A work which, according to the eight-time winner, has borne fruit.
For the LCR driver, this improvement is still unknown to him, because he only had this year's machine to get his teeth into. On Monday, he first had to fight against himself to embark on the last of the three days of testing at losail : " lThe leather was torn off during my fall on Sunday. From hand to elbow, everything was immediately covered in blood. I then spent about two hours at the Clinica Mobile in front of the ventilator for the swelling to go away. The first ten rounds hurt terribly » comments the teammate Nakagami.
This milestone passed in a heroic manner, we then had to fight against the motorcycle… “ We continued to work with the 2020 bike, that's what we had available. We tried a few new parts and did a lot of tricks. I have a hard-working team behind me. I want to give something back to them. The overall timesheet doesn't look good. I found positive things, but there are also negative things. Overall, I'm happy with my pace. Mostly, measured by how bad I feel about this bike. »
He details his concerns as follows: “ you never have the same sensations regarding grip, you feel a moment of sliding and just after feeling that you have too much grip, it's very strange. My best time came with the tires having 10 laps and that's not good. We go faster with worn tires, we can slide even more, it's true, but we can enter the curves faster »
Crutchlow adds: “ the problem is that when I brake hard in the middle of a curve, the bike pushes the front. I have an idea of what it is but I don't know if it will be easy to fix, we'll see if we can do it. We have been carrying these issues for some time. »
In these conditions what does he hope for? Qatar Grand Prix which will take place on March 8 in Losail? “ At the moment it looks like I'll qualify at the back and maybe move up. But first I would have to overtake many drivers. I can't do a quick ride. When the tire has worn out I can work around the problems better, it's strange. We will continue to work. I'm sure HRC will know what to do after these three days of testing. »
MotoGP Test Qatar J3: times
