Today marked the halfway point of the 2017 MotoGP World Championship pre-season testing and so far everything has gone well for the LCR HONDA team. With Cal Crutchlow having had another excellent day at the Phillip Island circuit in Australia, things already appear much rosier, aboard the #35 Honda, than a year ago...
Crutchlow completed several long runs this Thursday and, with consistently fast times, he even had the luxury of taking the 3rd best time of the day, just 16 thousandths behind Marc Marquez.
His time of 1'29.325 was almost three-quarters of a second faster than yesterday's, although the British driver did not go for the last fractions of a second.
We remember that it was on this same circuit that Cal Crutchlow won his second MotoGP victory, last year ahead of Valentino Rossi, after qualifying in 1'30.981 on an almost dry track.
Cal Crutchlow, 3rd (1'29.325 – lap 28 of 80): “Today was a more productive day for the LCR HONDA team. Yesterday there may have been some teething problems, but today it seemed like we were able to keep a good pace. We are satisfied with this rhythm because it is regular. We tried a lot of different things on the bike, some of which were good and some not so much. We still need to work on these areas, but I think the Honda seems to be improving overall, and that's good for us.
We need to keep giving the right information to the factory to improve, and I didn't even try to run a 'fast' time today, but if we had, I feel we could have be very competitive. However, this is something we can do another day, because in the meantime I am quite satisfied with our consistency. The tire wear has been satisfactory and the bike generally works well too, and even if the feeling is not yet perfect, the speed is there, so that is positive. »