WithU Yamaha’s Cal Crutchlow overcame MotoGP free practice injuries to qualify 15th at Buriram on Saturday afternoon.
Equaling the teams’ best qualifying result of the season - from Andrea Dovizioso back at Austin, Texas - Crutchlow completed the opening qualifying session fifth, to secure a fifth row start for Sunday’s 26-lap race, despite battling injuries from his FP2 highside.
“Obviously today I felt the effects of the injury from yesterday,” Crutchlow admitted. “I woke up not feeling very fresh, that’s for sure! But overall, we can be happy with the performance today.
“I tried my best in FP3, after what happened yesterday I was a bit reluctant to push to the limit to try and go to Q2 so we went into Q1. To qualify 15th is not so bad but honestly speaking, we are struggling with the rear grip of the bike this weekend.
“It’s a little bit due to the nature of the circuit, but also with the Yamaha, we seem to be struggling quite a lot. Therefore, we will look tonight together with the team and the Yamaha engineers, if we can improve this for tomorrow, because I think we can have a good race.
“My pace is good. I’m happy, but I know we can improve. So, let’s see the situation tomorrow for the race.
“We have the warm up to try a few things. Hopefully the warm up is dry, or wet if it’s going to be a wet race, to get some time to understand the bike a bit more in these conditions. Overall, I think we have done a good job again this weekend.”
