Friday at the Mobility Resort Motegi saw just one session for the MotoGP class. To ensure all the material will arrive in time for all teams straight from Aragon, the Japanese GP started late on Friday with an FP1, which was extended to 75 minutes. Although the circuit was overcast all day and it drizzled a bit in some sectors of the track, the practice remained mainly dry and gave riders and teams a good opportunity to arrive back in Motegi after the last two Grand Prix’ in the land of the rising sun had to be cancelled due to the pandemic.
It was a great comeback by Cal Crutchlow, who though had been testing at the Japanese venue some weeks ago but on the newly developed Yamaha, he now is riding the actual YZR-M1 for this weekend. Yet, he showed some fantastic speed from the word go. He ended Friday in P17, but was missing out on the top by just 0.678 seconds.
#35 Cal Crutchlow – P17
“Today was a strange day. Waiting around until 3 o’clock to ride is not ideal, but I think all MotoGP riders have just been waiting to go out on track today. The lap times were very impressive for the first session. There was a little bit of drizzle in the session as well, so everyone was pushing to be in the top 10 because it looks like it’s going to rain tomorrow. Me being competitive, but disappointed not to be in the top 10 because at one point I thought we had a chance. I just didn’t have a good feeling with the rear tyre on the last run. I did a good banker lap of 1:44.2 and knew where I could improve, but we struggled with the rear tyre, it was not feeling great in the last run. I went a tiny bit faster, I made this in the corners. But the team did a good job today. I’m happy with how we performed, but we need to understand the braking, because I struggled in the braking zone with the performance of the brakes at the moment to be able to stop the bike. Let’s see if we can improve, if we get some dry sessions tomorrow, but it looks unlikely. Overall, the team did a good job, thanks to them for today.”
Results FP1
Source: motogp.com, rnfracing.com