Crutchlow: 'Foot in air' during fall, 'Vinales flying'

Cal Crutchlow, escaped any further injuries to his healing ankle during a day two fall at the Sepang MotoGP test, where he went on to set a close fifth fastest lap time

Crutchlow – who said he remembers little about the accident that smashed his right ankle at Phillip Island last October, other than “getting off the thing at 325k an hour!” – was caught out at Turn 5 on an out-lap.

“We think it was because I’d just gone out of the pits. I was one-second off in the first sector, tipped into turn five and ed,” explained the LCR Honda rider.

“I rolled onto my left-hand side and lifted my right foot in the air the whole way into the gravel! Now I have a hole in my shoulder, because I spent so long on my left-hand side!

“But overall the day went well.”

Crutchlow’s 1m 59.566s, set on the 2019 spec RC213V, put him second to Andrea Dovizioso on the timesheets for much of the day.

However, he was pushed down to fifth (+0.669s) by fast late-laps from Maverick Vinales (Yamaha), Alex Rins (Suzuki) and Jack Miller (Pramac Ducati), who filled the top three places.

“I felt good. And I was not really pushing for a lap time as such, 90% not 100%. It was fast enough for second at the time. But I saw some people ‘chew the dash’ off at the end of the day.

“Not Maverick though, he’s flying… Yamaha is strong. Ducati is strong, but Maverick seems the strongest by far. Petrucci and Dovi are fast, and their package is working well.

“But I would say Marc could do a ‘59.0 tomorrow morning, probably faster, and he’s going to be competitive as well. Don’t forget you have to be there and finish every race [to win the title]. You can’t just be fast here in Malaysia…”