LCR never eyed Crutchlow/Redding British dream team

A British dream team featuring Cal Crutchlow and Scott Redding in next year’s MotoGP world championship never came close to reality.

With Redding unexpectedly back on the rider market for a period after Fausto Gresini couldn’t raise the budget to lease a factory Honda RC213V for the Briton next year, it was rumoured that LCR would snap up the vacant factory bike to pair the 21-year-old with Crutchlow.

But Honda inked a deal with rising Aussie Moto3 star Jack Miller and will place him on a production RC213V-RS in Lucio Cecchinello’s Monaco-based squad.

Cecchinello will be sponsored by London-based CWM World in 2015 and it was rumoured they had been keen on running an all-British line-up.

But that was rubbished by Cecchinello, who denied ever speaking to Honda about the prospect of leasing a second factory RC213V for 2015 having already snapped up Crutchlow to replace Stefan Bradl.

He told MCN: “We never spoke about that because the reality is that my budget is set that we can do a factory bike that is already allocated to Cal Crutchlow and we can do an Open bike. We have no economical power to do two factory bikes. That is impossible for us.”

Asked if CWM World had been approached about possibly upping its investment to run Crutchlow and Redding, Cecchinello added: “We never presented this project at all.”

Redding will get to a ride a factory RC213V machine in 2015 after it was confirmed in Misano recently that the Marc VDS Racing squad will expand its involvement and set-up a one-rider project for the Gloucestershire rider next season.

Fausto Gresini, who ran into a sponsorship crisis that meant he couldn’t continue his long-running relationship with Honda, will now run Aprilia’s official factory entry for the next four years after the Italian brand confirmed it will be back in MotoGP a year ahead of schedule next season.