Set-up eludes Cal Crutchlow again on Yamaha upgrades

All year Cal Crutchlow has wanted the same factory spec fuel tank and seat unit that works Yamaha duo Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo have been racing.

But after racing the new parts to fifth in Indianapolis five days ago, Crutchlow was sixth during the opening day of practice in Brno today and now wondering for how much longer he will carry on using the upgrades.

The Monster Yamaha Tech 3 rider has struggled to stop his satellite YZR-M1 on a full fuel tank in the early stages of races in 2013.

The new factory spec fuel tank and seat unit is designed to help improve in that area and while Crutchlow has improved his pace on a full fuel load, he has struggled to be as fast as usual as the fuel load lightens.

Today was no exception even though he was only 0.3s off Stefan Bradl’s best pace in an incredibly close two practice sessions in the Czech Republic today.

Speaking after he set a best lap of 1.56.800, the 27-year-old said: “The lap times are really close and I am not concerned about that but we tried four completely different set-ups and when we tried to build a really good bike out of them it never worked.

I have the new tank and seat, which I have been asking for all year, and now I don’t particularly like it and it is a puzzle. I haven’t had enough time to refine the set-up. Going back will make it worse because then I will lose time at the start of the race. At Indy the first five laps were my best five laps of the year, but afterwards it was disaster. That’s how I feel now. I can stop the bike not so bad when I have good grip but when the grip goes away I can’t carry corner speed and I can’t stop. I’m not so happy with the position but the gap in times is nothing.

The pace of the top six guys is very similar. To be so close to Valentino (Rossi) and Jorge (Lorenzo) after not testing I don’t think is a bad thing. But we definitely need to improve the set-up with the new parts.”