Crutchlow says Michelin supersoft wet tyre “a waste of time”

The French tyre company mandated a maximum stint length of 10 laps on its supersoft compound wet-weather front tyre during Friday practice.

Valentino Rossi was caught out by the ruling, doing an 11-lap run on the supersoft rubber, which meant he had the majority of his laptimes deleted and fell from second to 20th on the timesheets in FP1.

He lost the chance of improving his time in second practice after it was cancelled amid worsening weather conditions.

Crutchlow questioned the wisdom of Michelin bringing a tyre to Australia that it knew wouldn’t last.

“It’s a waste of time, I don’t even know why they brought it,” said the LCR Honda rider. “Who arrives at a circuit with a tyre and says you can only do eight [flying] laps?

"Maybe they were doing it to the extent that they would cut it tonight and check it, but I doubt it.

"I don’t know, honestly. At the end of the day, it’s a strange situation to me. I just don’t understand their thinking of bringing a tyre that you are allowed to do eight laps on.

“And you know what they will say? ‘It was perfect to go out this afternoon’ – what about the standing water that’s two inches deep?”

Crutchlow set the pace in first practice, 0.041s quicker than Rossi, but says he could have gone considerably faster without traffic getting in his way.

“I got held up on my first lap, I was 1.5s slower in one sector, then on the last lap I lost the last two sectors because I had to pass four guys,” he said.

“It wasn’t a very good lap time, I thought it would have been a lot quicker. I was not pushing at that point for a laptime.

“Then it started raining hard, and my hands got so cold that I just came in! Then I sat the rest of the session out, so I did eight laps all day!

"There was nothing to gain in going out there, if it was a race it would 100 percent have been cancelled because you couldn't see a thing."

Additional reporting by Oriol Puigdemont