The Malaysian-owned squad morphed out of the defunct Petronas Sepang Racing Team for 2022 and carried on as Yamaha’s satellite outfit with Darryn Binder and Andrea Dovizioso.
But Dovizioso elected to retire after the San Marino GP as he couldn’t adapt to the Yamaha, while Binder will move to Moto2 in 2023 as RNF switched to Aprilia machinery.
Retired three-time MotoGP race winner Crutchlow was drafted in from Aragon onwards to replace Dovizioso and has scored points in three of the last four grands prix.
Fitting slicks at the end of a wet-to-dry FP2 at Sepang on Friday afternoon, Crutchlow ended it nine tenths clear of championship leader Francesco Bagnaia on the factory Ducati and says he knew in those conditions he could do the lap time.
“It was an irrelevant session, but I felt ok so I put the slicks on and went at the end,” Crutchlow said after topping a MotoGP session for the first time since Aragon 2018 when he was with LCR Honda.
“I was actually going to go way before that, but I knew it was completely irrelevant, even at the end when we were going round [on slicks].
“As soon as it started to dry I told the guys ‘I’ve got no grip’. The front of the bike felt great, on acceleration we had no grip.
“And I said as soon as it starts to dry I will be able to go to the front because I knew that I’ve always been able to do that in my career in tricky conditions when it’s half wet, half dry I’ve been ok.
“But in those conditions where there’s not enough water on the floor, the Yamaha doesn’t seem to come out of the corner.
“So, I took the opportunity to put the slicks on at the end and pushed a little bit, but it was still five seconds off what we should be doing.
“But I felt ok, no different to any other thing. I would have done that in a test, let alone in a session there.
“But the team were obviously happy, the sponsors here, [the team is] Malaysian. So it’s good, it gives them a little bit of a reward for a difficult year.”
Crutchlow currently sits outside of the Q2 places having ended Friday’s only fully dry running in FP1 18th, and admits trying to get out of Q1 if it rains on Saturday will be difficult.
“It’s just a shame it didn’t put me through to Q2, because if it rains in the night – which it looks like it will – it’s going to be a hard Q1 again, because it looks like it will rain in the afternoon and it’s difficult to qualify like that,” Crutchlow added.
“When you qualify in the rain, it's difficult, especially in the Q1 because you’re trying to go through [to Q2].”
