Cal Crutchlow claimed a spot in the top 10 on the opening day of free practice for the San Marino Grand Prix at Misano. The LCR Honda CASTROL rider is sporting the legendary oil manufacturer’s famous red, white and green colours this weekend as part of their ongoing sponsorship association. Under cloudy but sunny skies in Rimini, Crutchlow – like the rest of the MotoGP field – struggled with grip issues for much of Friday. After finishing 16th in FP1, the Briton did improve to secure tenth spot in FP2 and put himself provisionally on course for a place in Q2 tomorrow. However, he admits he must improve his feeling with the bike if he is to challenge at the front this weekend.

Cal Crutchlow – 10th (1’33.907 – lap 17 of 19)
“I’m struggling with the grip of the track, same as everybody else. We need to improve, we need to improve my feeling with the bike as you can see from what Marc (Marquez) is doing, even Jorge (Lorenzo) is going a bit faster this weekend than I am really. I just don’t have great feeling at the minute, with the tyres or the bike. Maybe it’s not the bike, it might be my feeling with the setting of the bike, but we need to improve. But I’ll try my best and the team are trying, they’ve done many things with the bike already this weekend and after the test here. The problem is that the grip is so low compared to last year and my bike doesn’t turn very well compared to last year’s bike. I’m struggling at the moment, but we’ll do our best to improve tonight and for tomorrow.”

Results FP2:

Source: motogp.com, lcr.mc