Crutchlow confident but needs to improve

Cal Crutchlow was fifth fastest on the opening day at Indy but having made few changes through the day he feels there’s plenty of potential in the bike once the track improves tomorrow.

Unlike the factory Repsol Honda riders Crutchlow needed to change his rear tyre at the end of the session and while this improved his lap time the times of Marquez and Pedrosa showed the room for improvement for Crutchlow. However, having not ridden a bike since Sachsenring the Englishman was pleased with his feeling on the bike and felt that he got back up to speed quickly after the summer break.

“We need to improve a little, because I know Dani, Marc, Jorge never changed the rear tyre, and we all did,” said Crutchlow afterwards. “They managed to go faster in the end, even without changing the rear tire, and we all had to change the rear tire to go faster, so they have an advantage at the moment. But it’s how you come out of the summer break.

“I feel quite confident, I feel quite rusty, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow. I think we we can gain in a lot of areas, we never really altered the bike a lot today. I was just getting used to riding a little bit. I felt OK, I never felt great, I never felt bad. To be 5th, I’m happy enough, but definitely tomorrow, it’s going to be a little bit closer and a little bit harder, so we’ll look to see where we can improve and change some things tonight for tomorrow.”