Cal Crutchlow showed his competitiveness on the opening day of the Austrian Grand Prix in Spielberg on Friday, the LCR Honda rider posting the seventh fastest time of the day.
At a circuit where the horsepower of the Ducati bikes had been predicted to dominate, Crutchlow showed encouraging form on his RC213V as wet conditions in FP2 made things tricky once again for the MotoGP class riders.
Both sessions took place on a drying circuit after bouts of rain, but Crutchlow performed solidly and finished tenth in the morning session.
He improved further in the afternoon, ending fractionally behind Honda factory rider Marc Marquez who had to settle for sixth.
The LCR man feels there remains plenty of room for improvement ahead of Saturday's qualifying and is hoping some overnight work from his team will provide him with improved acceleration.
“In the first session there was a few damp patches, in the second session there were even more damp patches!” he explained. “It was quite a difficult day to manage that situation and work out which tyre to use and when, the medium rear tyre had better grip than the soft rear tyre which was strange."
"Overall I think we had quite a good day, but we're losing about three-tenths in the first section at the moment so we have to try and improve something somewhere.”
“I feel really good in the corners, but on the acceleration I don't know why we're losing so much. It's clear that we need to improve in this area. We'll need to look at it tonight and then try to go as fast as possible tomorrow morning.”
