Cal Crutchlow was one of the standout riders at the start of sunday’s MotoGP race at Motegi, but not for the best reason, but more because of a decision that turned out to be… wrong. The british wildcard rider admitted his mistake by continuing on track when almost everyone else had gone to the garage to change bikes with rain tyres.
‘Well, obviously it was the wrong decision because then we were too far back. Yeah, I should have picked it before and then we would have been in a better position, because my pace in the rain was actually really good. It was the right decision to stop the race’ said the Yamaha test rider, who races in the colours of the Yamalube RS4GP Racing Team.
The 13th-placed rider continued his analysis by explaining that he even had a good pace at the time the race was stopped: ‘When the red flag came out I actually had passed the two guys ahead as well but then it goes back a lap. Anyway we learned… We had some data and learned some things, but yeah I made a mistake of not coming in’.
And he explained how he managed to stay on the track and how he didn’t expect the rain to be so heavy: ‘The lap that everybody else came in because I didn’t think it was raining that bad and what I did was I put the power down on the bike and turned the traction control fully on so I could still have a little bit of grip and was able to manage that situation if it stopped raining or stayed the same’.
He concluded: ‘It was the right decision… In the end we all had dry visors on, the water coming in the helmet, which is normal for everybody, so the visibility was really bad, really really bad’.
