LCR Honda MotoGP rider Cal Crutchlow joked that he should get injured before every race, with the Brit fighting through injury once again to secure a podium at the Sachsenring.

A freak injury on Wednesday left Crutchlow with a small fracture in his tibia, and with significant ligament damage in his knee. Despite this, Crutchlow more than held his own, finishing third behind Marc Marquez and Maverick Vinales. This marked the second time this year when Crutchlow has returned from injury to secure a podium, when he claimed a podium in his first race back after injury in Qatar on the opening night.

“Maybe I should get injured before every race, panic Lucio a little more, he’s always stressing and worrying,” said the Brit.

“As you said Wednesday I had a strange accident and hurt my knee. Honestly speaking my physical condition over the weekend was fine. I didn’t complain about it, I got on with my job, as I said on Thursday, I wasn’t going to make this an excuse to go fast or slow this weekend. When the chips are down and I need to pull out a result I feel I can pull out a result.”

Crutchlow was on the rear wheel of Vinales for the second half of the race, before a mistake with two laps dropped the Honda man back, this left Crutchlow explaining he settled for third, knowing a podium was a fantastic result.

“The team did a fantastic job, we worked all weekend on what we thought would be the race pace,” he said.

“Yesterday I did around a 28-lap mark and did a 22.7 and that’s exactly what I did on the 28th lap. So everyone was shocked when my pace was that, but I thought that would be the pace in the race and it was.

“As Maverick said the track condition was not great. I felt in the middle of the race I had a bit better pace than Maverick, but once Rins crashed I thought I’m on the podium anyway we have nine seconds to the guys behind and the gap is going up every lap.

“Honestly speaking I planned to attack with five or six laps to go, but the wind was so strong. I had all the vents open on my helmet and my eyes were streaming with water. I tried to blink it out and he got a gap and then I came again.

“Then as you saw, with two laps to go I made a big mistake at turn ten and lost the rear of the bike off throttle, which with the Honda is quite difficult to manage when that happens and I said Maverick can have it, I’m very happy with the podium today, we deserve this.”