Crutchlow not looking beyond MotoGP

Cal Crutchlow says he isn’t thinking beyond MotoGP as he sets out a goal of ‘trying to get faster’ over the next two years.

The British rider signed an extended Honda deal in the LCR team until 2020 and while Crutchlow admits challenging for the premier class title is a tough ask, the 32-year-old says he will ‘give it a shot’.

At the Aragon pre-race press conference on Thursday, Crutchlow was asked what his goals were over the next few years.

He replied: “Try and get faster. I think that states the obvious because I’m sure when Marc (Marquez) a few years ago won 10 or 11 races on the bounce, I’m sure he still wanted to get faster. This is the life we live in motorsport: you never want to stop improving or being as fast as possible.

“When I stop racing, I don’t want to stop because I’m going slow, so in another two years I want to keep going faster and faster until the day that I stop riding.

“But my aim and my target is to try and win some more races and b as high up in the championship as possible. If you’re talking about winning the championship, I think (it is) very, very difficult,” added Crutchlow, who expects his current MotoGP deal to be his last.

“I think the reality is that for any non-factory rider it is difficult, and when you are racing against the best guys in the world, it is already difficult, but that doesn’t mean I won’t give it a shot and I will continue to do that for the next two years as well.”

Crutchlow is sixth in the championship and only five points behind factory Yamaha rider Maverick Vinales, but he feels he could have been much higher up in the standings had it not been for some ‘bad mistakes’.

“I don’t now if I feel stronger on the bike particularly, I think the team has been working very well. It’s nice to be on a good run, but I think we have missed a lot of opportunities to be on the podium this year, like Jerez, Sachsenring or the Circuit of the Americas, so we could have been a lot further up in the championship if I hadn’t made some bad mistakes or bad decisions at the time.

“I think now we have to accept sometimes to be maybe a little bit slower and finish the race, and that’s our package; but the team at Honda are doing a good job and I look forward to starting here at Aragon. It’s a good circuit and one that I think most of the riders enjoy riding and we look forward to trying to do a good job here.”