MotoGP Valencia: Crutchlow happy, ‘done our job’ in final GP showing

Cal Crutchlow returns to the life of a retired MotoGP racer after concluding his time at WithU RNF Yamaha 16th in Sunday’s Valencia GP.

Running in the points after launching from 17th on the final grid of 2022, Crutchlow struggled in the opening laps before suffering a crash on lap seven. Recovering in 20th and with a 50 second defect, the Englishman met the flag just adrift of the points positions on his final race with the satellite team, having replaced the retiring Andrea Dovizioso for the last six of the season.

“I’m happy with what we have done in the last six races,” Crutchlow confirmed from Spain. “I felt good, I felt a lot better than I thought I would feel!

“This weekend was difficult but I honestly believed I would have had a good result. The problem was the tyre pressure at the start of the race - this was evidently why I crashed because of the massive rise in pressure, it was way over when I crashed.

“Then when I rode round alone it was in a perfect range, I had a great pace where I wanted to. I was just making sure I finished the race incase I could get a point for the team. Overall, not a bad weekend, my pace was okay, nothing really, really special. We did our job for Yamaha and for the RNF MotoGP Team and now I can go home happy.”