Cal Crutchlow believes he would have been ‘right there’ with pole sitter Marc Marquez had he been able to secure a tow as effective as his Honda counterpart during qualifying for the Italian MotoGP.
The Briton enjoyed an understated but impressive day at Mugello as he shrugged off a crash in FP3 – where he was also out-paced by LCR team-mate Takaaki Nakagami on the older Honda – to qualify on the second row in sixth position.
Half-a-second adrift of Honda counterpart and pole sitter Marquez, Crutchlow says he would have been chasing a front row had he not completed his lap on his own without the time-gaining slipstream.
“I feel good actually and definitely a lot better than I did yesterday,” he said. “We decided to focus our work on one bike and one setting which was good, because we could adjust small things from there.
“I wanted to be a bit quicker, and down into the 1’45s because that would have been there. We’re half a second behind Marquez in qualifying, but with the tow he got he probably picked up four-tenths, so we’re right there.”
A strong day all round for the LCR Honda team, Nakagami booked his place into Q2 with the fourth quickest time in FP3 en route to tenth in Q2 as the sec ond highest-placed 2018 bike.
“Of course I’m really happy about the second day today because we have improved a lot from yesterday. During qualifying I was a little bit disappointed with what happened in sector four on the last lap.
“I hit the bumps and couldn’t hold on to the bike, so I lost a bit of time. Despite this, I was still able to improve on my best lap of the weekend.”
