This weekend will mark a return to MotoGP action for Cal Crutchlow for the first time since the British rider stepped down from the LCR Honda team at the end of the 2020 season, as he returns to action at the Styrian Grand Prix to replace the injured Franco Morbidelli in the satellite Petronas Yamaha team.
But what’s possible for the three-time MotoGP race winner when he makes his return, and lines up fully fit for probably the first time in well over a calendar year after an injury-hit final season before retirement?
Can he realistically challenge at the front, or is he simply there as a seat filler while Morbidelli continues to recover?
Well, there’s one thing for sure so far – Crutchlow is playing his cards close to his chest and not setting himself any targets to achieve beyond just getting back into the groove of racing a MotoGP machine.
“I’m really looking forward to being back on the grid,” said the 35-year-old. “And getting into the swing of a race weekend again, although it’s going to feel very different to the job that I’ve been doing this year as Yamaha’s test rider.
“The circuit at Spielberg isn’t one that I’ve enjoyed too much in the past, however, I did finish fourth in 2018 and that was a good result. It’s not a fast and flowing circuit, it’s somewhere where you need to be quick and very precise. I don’t have a target as such when it comes to results, my main aim will just be to try to improve session by session.
“I’ll be working with Ramon Forcada, who knows the Yamaha bike very well. I think it will be good as Ramon was with Yamaha when I was. I’m sure it will go well; I just want to make sure that I do a good job for the team.”
However, the reality of the situation, at least at the Red Bull Ring, is one that Crutchlow has already hinted at – the Austrian track isn’t one of his favourites, and it certainly isn’t a venue where the underpowered Yamaha M1 is expected to go well.
With long straights and hard braking hindering the strengths of the Yamaha through fast corners, it’ll be a pair of weekends where KTM and Ducati will instead be expected to shine, meaning that Crutchlow couldn’t have picked a worse time to have a MotoGP return.
Or could he? A significant recovery process from major knee surgery to correct a long-standing injury means that Morbidelli will not just miss these two races (as well as the Assen round just before MotoGP’s five-week summer break), but will potentially sit out a significant portion of the remainder of the season.
Crutchlow has already been confirmed as also joining the Malaysian team for his home race at Silverstone later this month, and if he’s canny (something he always is), then Austria’s back-to-back races could well be used as something of an extended test session for a bigger target.
It’s no secret that he has something of an innate ability to jump back onto a MotoGP machine with little to no experience and immediately find his form, and it’ll be no hindrance to him that he hasn’t raced since November nor ridden since April, when he last took on his Yamaha test rider duties.
Famous for going against the grain and refusing to use motorbikes to train away from the MotoGP circuit, instead preferring to cycle with close friend Mark Cavendish, Crutchlow regularly went months through his career without touching a motorbike.
Most famously, he returned to action in early 2019 after missing a big chunk of the 2018 thanks to a badly shattered ankle at the Australian Grand Prix, far from fully fit and unable to even train all winter let alone ride – and scored a podium first time out at the Qatar Grand Prix.
He’s unlikely to be significantly hindered by lining up on Morbidelli’s 2019-spec Yamaha, either. MotoGP rules means that Crutchlow has to ride the existing machinery of the rider he’s replacing rather than do what fellow guest rider Dani Pedrosa is doing and try out a 2022-spec bike in the race.
That means Crutchlow will be the only one of the four Yamaha riders on older-spec machinery. Yet it’s hard to argue that there’s anything really wrong with the old bike. Morbidelli won three races on it last year, and while there have been some technical improvements since then, it isn’t exactly ready for the scrap heap just yet.
In fact, if we’ve learned anything from the seriousness of Morbidelli’s injuries, it’s that perhaps putting the blame for his tough start to 2021 onto the machinery might not quite be the correct take.
So, with all that in mind, is a big push for the British GP a more realistic goal for Crutchlow than any hopes of impressing in Austria? No one is expecting to see him fighting for the podium on home soil at the end of the month – but it wouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise if it was to happen!
