Cal Crutchlow admits he got “sucked” into locking his front brake at the Circuit of the Americas' Turn 11, which caused his MotoGP Americas Grand Prix crash.
The LCR Honda rider was running in third place behind Yamaha's Valentino Rossi when he fell under braking for Turn 11 on the sixth lap of Sunday's race.
Crutchlow says the “difficult” nature of the Honda on corner-entry led him to lock the front, and admits he used too much of the RC213V's “typical” braking “ammunition”.
“Obviously disappointed with the result because all weekend we've had a good pace and I had a good pace in the race,” Crutchlow said.
“I felt I should have gone to second and seen what would have happened. But I wanted to stay in that position [third] and see if I could start to make a move.
“But I just got sucked in on the braking, and with how difficult it is to enter in the corner with the Honda – we have a lot of shaking with the bike – I just locked the front brake.
“It looked like on a lot of the cameras I was gaining a lot on the braking zone, but that's the typical Honda style.
“That's our ammunition, and we tried to use it today, and both me and Marc [Marquez, who fell at Turn 12 on lap nine] tried to use it too much it seems.”
Mechanical issue thwarts luckless Lorenzo
Jorge Lorenzo pulled out of the Texas race just a lap after team-mate Marquez crashed, with his Honda breaking down at Turn 12.
The Spaniard – who suffered a chain problem in qualifying – says the his first three Honda races have been “completely bad luck”, having encountered several issues on his Honda on top of his injury woes so far this season.
“The bike had a problem and I couldn't finish the race,” Lorenzo said.
“Very disappointed because in these three races three different things happened that stopped us getting better results, especially this one, which stopped us from finishing the race.
“So, just completely bad luck. The last championships, everything goes perfect, like I had in [my first title-winning year in] 2010 for example.
“And this one for the moment has been more or less the opposite. Bad luck, good luck, you cannot change. It happens or it doesn't happen.
“It happened this time, in three races in a row. So now we got to Jerez, the important thing is to go fast there, to be more competitive, not fighting for third or fourth row, but first and second row in the qualifying.
“And then try to make a much better result in the race.”
