The 14th round of the MotoGP World Championship got underway in a wet Aragon on Friday, but LCR Honda rider Cal Crutchlow enjoyed a solid opening at the Motorland Aragon circuit. In what is the third of four races on Spanish soil in the calendar, Crutchlow performed well in tricky conditions to end up sixth fastest on day one.

Despite still being troubled by the finger tendon injury he sustained at his training base earlier in the month, the Briton was seventh in the morning’s wet FP1 session. Rain ensured FP2 also took place on a slippery track, but Crutchlow improved his time and moved up a place on the timesheets. The LCR man was only four tenths behind Ducati’s Jorge Lorenzo in second, while fellow Honda rider Dani Pedrosa was the only man to dip under the two-minute mark as he went quickest.


#35 Cal Crutchlow (6th – 2’00.482)

“It was not too bad, as you probably saw in that (second) session it was a little bit sore on my arm today, probably because this is a left-handed circuit and I’m still holding the bars really differently as I have to keep the finger completely straight. But we’ll work on that and see if we can improve that for tomorrow by moving the position of the bars a little bit.

“I felt good and quite comfortable with the bike overall. I didn’t feel fantastic, but if we had been racing today we would have been competitive which is pleasing”.