LCR Honda rider Cal Crutchlow managed to make his way up to eighth before crashing out with 16 laps to go in Qatar.
Crutchlow had made a fantastic start and was out on his own chasing the group ahead of him that consisted of Repsol Honda rider Dani Pedrosa and Ecstar Suzuki Team rider Maverick Vinales. His crash was not due to a rider error, neither was it due to the team or a manufacturers error, it was caused by the new ECU.
This year one of the rule changes going into 2016 was that all of the bikes in the class had to be fitted with the same ECU supplied by Magneti Marelli. This was to avoid richer developers, who had already funded research into their own ECUs, from having an advantage over the other riders in the class. However, the three manufacturers including Ducati, Honda and Yamaha all had an input and any changes that need to be made in the future need to be approved by them, if they are to be implemented.
Unfortunately, for Crutchlow, he was the first victim of the ECU malfunctioning resulting in the British rider entering the corner over 60km/h faster than the lap previous.
Twitter: Tried my best today. Technical problem was cause of crash which is unfortunate but no fault of team or manufacturer ! Look to Argentina … (@calcrutchlow)
