LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow had a promising first day at MotorLand Aragon despite struggling with his bike on corner entry, finishing third fastest overall and mixing it with the Repsol pairing in FP2.
The British rider came into the weekend reckoning that the Honda riders may suffer with Aragon’s numerous low-gear acceleration points. Though a slight issue, mainly in the final sector, corner entry was the area that Crutchlow found he struggled the most with.
Crutchlow ran wide at Turn 1 several times, one such occasion prompting a rather animated display of disgruntlement from the Czech Grand Prix winner. With corner entry the area where the Honda riders tend to gain a lot of time, Crutchlow has expressed that solving his issues will prove vital.
To combat his woes, the LCR rider opted to try Michelin’s new asymmetric hard front tyre in the latter stages of FP2 and completed some impressive lap times on it. Crutchlow managed a best lap of 1m48.510s right at the end of the afternoon session, putting him just under a tenth off the pace in third place.
Though still needing to rectify his problems coming into the corners, Crutchlow is still happy with how his Friday went and this has given him a big boost in confidence heading into tomorrow’s running.
“It’s not been too bad a day, but not great either. I felt OK with the bike and the LCR Honda Team have done a good job again as we worked through a few things that we needed to try,” said Crutchlow.
“Mainly I’m struggling on corner entry at the moment, and we need to improve that for tomorrow because that’s the area we will gain most from. Deceleration is where it’s been an issue, which means we are forced to take more risks with the front, so let’s see tomorrow. Overall we are happy enough and we are quite confident after how the day has gone.”
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