Cal Crutchlow will start Sunday’s Aragon MotoGP™ race from the second row of the grid after his performance in qualifying gave him the fifth fastest time of the session. That result was despite a front end crash on his second qualifying run.
The 30 year-old Briton has been in good form all weekend, even if he acknowledges some problems on corner entry with his RC213V. Crutchlow has consistently churned out competitive race laps, and although he was disappointed not to get a final fast run in, he still stopped the clock with a best time of 1’47.843 for fifth on the grid.
Cal Crutchlow: “Obviously I’m disappointed because I felt I could easily have been on the front row. I made a mistake under braking at the end of the session, but this is typical with the Honda at the moment. I was pushing so hard in the braking zone to make up time on the others, but that’s MotoGP. For sure I wasn’t going to get in front of Marc Marquez who took pole, but I should have been second. I was pushing to the limit and this is what happens.
“The hope is that we are up there battling, but starting from the second row it is a bit more difficult. We have (Andrea) Dovizioso next to us and he always gets good starts, but he could hold us up in the race because he has such a fast bike out of the corners. You need to be able to push in the first few laps, but he might get in my way. I hope not!”