Crutchlow suffering from gout, 'It's wrecking me!'
A tiring journey to Austin has had serious repercussions for Cal Crutchlow as his qualifying efforts were hampered by gout, which have left the Englishman hobbling around the MotoGP paddock.
The Englishman was one of several premier-class riders to endure a strenuous journey from South America to Texas, as a string of cancellations and delays forced him and several team members to drive from Termas de Rio Hondo to Buenos Aires.
It meant Crutchlow was unable to regulate his diet and thus gout surfaced on Saturday, leaving Crutchlow in 'the worst pain you can imagine.'
"It's painful," he said. "I've had it before, a few times. I think it's linked in with asthma and uric acid being high, I can normally monitor it. With the bad travel this week it was impossible to know what it was. I drank one orange juice and I was finished. It was full of sugar and wrecked me. It's disappointing. It's the worst pain in the world, like breaking a bone. Hopefully I can manage it by tomorrow. It seems to be getting a little bit worse."
Although not in his best physical shape, Crutchlow still managed to qualify on the second row.
"I should have been faster than I did but I didn't. I made a mistake in my lap. We've never had a perfect qualifying [in LCR]. Today I planned on making it perfect. Marc and I slowed down a lot. We didn't want other guys following us. I had no heat in the rear tyre when I started to push.
"The first sector was really bad and then I was OK. I was last in the first sector and not so bad in the others. The general feeling seems to be getting better. The hard rear tyre felt good in FP3 but we had a mechanical issue. We had something in FP4 that I wasn't sure about.
"We made some inroads but Marc is making everyone look average. Me and Dani and the other manufacturers. He's riding incredible and we know he's special here but there's nobody that can do what he does here with this bike. We have to take him out of the equation and look at ourselves, especially at this track.
"Tomorrow should be interesting. Some guys have a good pace. The lap times are slow but that's the limit. I'll run the hard rear and the medium front."
