Crutchlow bounces back with Aragon top six

After a nightmare weekend at Misano, Cal Crutchlow returned to the MotoGP top-six at Aragon on Sunday.

The LCR Honda rider worked his way gradually forwards from eighth to finish in sixth place, five-seconds from the podium.

"Obviously a lot more positive than Misano," Crutchlow said. "It's nice to be able to bounce back after a weekend in Misano where I saw the top six for three corners, and today we finished in the top six.

"It was not an easy race to manage, honestly. Even for Marc. I think he did a fantastic job managing, because he had superior speed all weekend, and that also brings pressure to finish the race.

"Jack also did a fantastic job to be on the podium. He had great pace as we saw in FP4 and their bike was working very, very well."

Crutchlow's own podium chances suffered a blow when he lost ground on the opening lap.

"I got caught up in a lot of mess in the first lap, I lost a lot of time," he said. "I think after two laps I was already 4.5 seconds down, then after seven laps I was 7 seconds down because I was stuck behind Valentino and Aleix. Then I went to pass Aleix, hit the back of him, and lost another couple of seconds.

"So I think overall, the pace that we had on the normal laps, we did a good job.

"I wish that I could have been in the podium fight, but I wasn't far off it. I started to be able to claw down Quartararo, but my problem was I hammered the rear tyre to get across the gap.

"But I tried my best, and it's nice to have a top six finish after last weekend."

Crutchlow is ninth in the world championship heading into the flyaway races.