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Crutchlow can't understand Barcelona chicane complaints

Cal Crutchlow says he can’t understand why other MotoGP riders are complaining about changes to the Barcelona circuit ahead of this weekend’s Catalan GP.

Cal Crutchlow, Team LCR Honda

Cal Crutchlow, Team LCR Honda

Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Cal Crutchlow, Team LCR Honda
Cal Crutchlow, Team LCR Honda
Cal Crutchlow, Team LCR Honda
Jorge Lorenzo, Ducati Team
Cal Crutchlow, Team LCR Honda, Marco Barbiani, Team LCR Honda data engineer
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team

Following the death of Moto2 rider Luis Salom in a Friday practice accident, riders contested the rest of the 2016 event the track layout used by Formula 1, including bypassing Turn 12 where Salom crashed.

A dedicated chicane for MotoGP has now been built, before F1’s Turns 14 and 15, which the majority of riders sampled during a private test last month.

Ducati’s Jorge Lorenzo said he felt the new chicane would help Honda, but Crutchlow says he is puzzled by the talk.

“Everyone is complaining about the new chicane because we chose it and we can’t really complain about it when we chose it,” Crutchlow said. 

“Sure we chose to go round the Formula 1 part [in 2016] because it was safer and then we were told that it wasn’t because the walls were too high, so we said ‘OK, make it this way’. 

“They’ve done that and now everyone is complaining about that. In the end, there’s nothing we can do about that.”

When told about Lorenzo believing the change hands Honda an advantage, Crutchlow said: “Lorenzo thinks anything will favour anyone else unless it's helping him. He was alright at the test.”

The Briton believes tyre wear will be a factor, based on how lap times dropped off during the test in mid-May after the French Grand Prix.

“It would be a long race because you see the long runs by some people over 20 laps and some people were dropping five seconds a lap,” he said.

“You go from Le Mans where Maverick [Vinales] sets the fastest lap on the last lap and then in Barcelona they do 20 laps and on the 20th lap they were five seconds slower than they were on the first and second lap.

“Everyone is in the same boat, and it’s about if you can limit it and drop three-and-a-half seconds or five seconds.”

However Honda stablemate and reigning world champion Marc Marquez believes the drop is only in the region of “one second-and-a-half."

He added: “Already Montmelo [Barcelona] is a circuit that with the new tyre you feel a lot because it's very long corners and also you push a lot tyres.

“The problem is in the morning, with the cold temperature, it looks like it dropped more. There was a problem but then during the day was more normal, we worked with the set-up and it was normal."

Additional reporting by Oriol Puigdemont

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