The British rookie completed an encouraging opening day at the Official MotoGP Test in Valencia.

Cal Crutchlow enjoyed his first Official day of testing in MotoGP at Valencia on Tuesday, as the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 rider continued to get to grips with the M1 machine ahead of his debut season in 2011.

“It’s been really good, nice to get out there and when the track finally dried we were all out,” said Crutchlow in reference to the weather conditions that hindered the commencement of the day’s riding. “It’s been good to get up to speed and work with the team.”

A crash midway through the afternoon for the 25 year-old Brit did not result in any negative consequences, as he explained: “We had put a new tyre in on that run, a harder front tyre, and I don’t know if the track was dirty with the rain, but I managed to crash for no reason!”

“We had less brake pressure, less corner speed, and managed to crash so no-one really knows why. I think it was just the harder front tyre so we’ll go back to the soft tomorrow and keep working with that, and make sure we do some more laps.”

Having gained a first impression of the M1 last month at Yamaha’s test track in Fukuroi, Japan, Crutchlow was pleased to have had an extended run on a predominantly dry surface as he put in 59 laps in total with a best time of 1’34.314 (14th on the timesheet).

“The test in Japan was in the rain so we only did six laps with dry tyres – it was nothing like this!” he concluded.