Crutchlow didn’t have an easy day. After topping the time sheets in wet and drying FP2 yesterday, he went quicker on a dry track this morning, improving his FP1 time by 1.252 seconds while testing different tyres. Yet, a crash ended his further chase for a fast lap time prematurely, whereby he came away battered and bruised. He managed to remount on his Yamaha YZR-M1 in FP4 and in Qualifying, where he again went 0.743 seconds faster to finish Q1 in P5, repeating his and the team’s best Qualifying result to date lining up in 15th.

#35 Cal Crutchlow – P15 –

“Today to be 15th on the grid in a tricky day in Malaysia is not too bad. To be honest, I didn’t have a clean lap at all, I could have gone faster but I wasn’t. Anyway, to be 15th is okay, we have a big battle on our hands tomorrow, we need to improve our pace and we need to look at the data tonight to understand where we can be better. I hit my hand a little bit during the crash this morning and we also had some technical problem in FP3, and this is the reason we couldn’t put a good lap time in the morning. But, overall, I feel okay and I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s race.”

Qualifying results:

Source: motogp.com, rnfracing.com