Slow healing arm troubles Cal Crutchlow

British rider Cal Crutchlow’s bid to get his 2013 MotoGP campaign back on track in Misano will not be helped by a slow healing right arm injury he suffered in the first of three bruising crashes at his home race in Silverstone earlier this month.

Crutchlow’s right arm swelled to twice its normal size after his crash strewn British Grand Prix and in the time between Silverstone and Misano, his arm has hardly recovered at all.

Crutchlow suffered nasty abrasions to his right arm when he fell at over 180mph in Saturday morning’s practice session at Silverstone. He fell a further two times before finishing in a bitterly disappointing seventh place in his home race.

The flesh wound on his right arm still looks almost new as Crutchlow met the media ahead of this weekend’s Misano clash. And he revealed to MCN that doctors had attempted him to get surgery on the injury only two days ago on the Isle of Man.

The 27-year-old said: “On Sunday night at Silverstone my arm was massive and it swelled to about twice the size of my left arm. The fluid in it was unbelievable. My arm just hasn’t been healing or forming a scab.

“It was just sticking to everything all of the time and so tender to touch, so I went to hospital and they wanted to operate on it on Tuesday afternoon. I wasn’t too keen on that.

“My doctor Ross Barker said we need to take the skin off because it is not healing. It wasn’t infected but it wasn’t doing anything. I’d had it out in the fresh air for over a week and it wasn’t even getting better. But luckily they couldn’t get me into theatre because there was no slot available. I didn’t want to be knocked out to have the skin taken off.

“But it is back to square one and it is red raw and I can’t touch it and I can’t have a massage on it or stretch it because the skin will split. It is going to be a difficult weekend with my arm but hopefully once I start using it again the swelling won’t come back because now it is a more normal size.

“It is not too bad now but in Silverstone I needed an extra inch put around my leathers on the forearm and it was still really tight.”

Having told MCN earlier this week he needed to regroup in Misano after a tough recent spell, the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 team rider emphasised again the need to get back to competitive form in San Marino.

Crutchlow hasn’t been close to a podium finish in the last four races and he has not been comfortable on his satellite YZR-M1 machine since he was given a new fuel tank and seat unit by Yamaha at the Indianapolis race in America last month.

Crutchlow will continue to race the new factory spec parts this weekend, which are designed to help his speed in the early laps on a full fuel tank.

Crutchlow added: “We need to go back to square one this weekend. And I’m talking about the bike and me. The last few races it hasn’t been working well and I’ve not had the results I want or the speed I need.

“The bike I ran in Germany was the one I had the closest reference to because it was the one I was closest to the win but at Silverstone I ran that bike and that was why I was crashing because I had no weight on the front of the bike.

“The two settings I always look at are Austin and Germany because I was so strong but it is not working at the moment. This weekend I will use the new fuel tank and I will use a base setting from Yamaha and then ride the bike. Hopefully it will work because I need to get back up to speed as well and get my mojo back.

“After Sachsenring I went from a second off winning the race and putting 10 seconds into the guy behind me to Laguna where I was useless and it was only a week later. I can’t work out how I went from so good to so bad.

“In Brno I felt I was back up to speed. Perhaps not like I was at the start of the year but I felt OK. I was happy to start pressing on and when I did I crashed. The problem with the front three guys is they never crash. But I am not too worried about it.

“After Brno I felt I lost some confidence with the front and then crashed three times at Silverstone losing the front so you end up going round in circles.”