Wife had to convince 40-year-old husband into shock MotoGP return

Cal Crutchlow made his last MotoGP start with LCR in 2020. Image: Joerg Mitter / Red Bull Content Pool

Zarco suffered leg injuries at Barcelona-Catalunya when he crashed his Honda and got tangled between the rear wheel and tail of Francesco Bagnaia’s Ducati.

LCR contacted Crutchlow in the wake of Zarco’s crash to ask if he would ride in place of the Frenchman.

He initially said no, though that changed when his wife challenged him.

“Lucio [Cecchinello, team manager] and the guys from the team were contacting me, asking me, saying that they wanted me to come back and ride,” Crutchlow explained.

“I initially said no, because I haven’t been on the bike in a long, long time.

“I went home and my wife said ‘Did Dako [Dakota Mamola, LCR team coordinator] call you?’ and I said ‘Yeah’.

“She said ‘Yeah, well they called me first to ask basically for permission’. She said ‘Why are you not doing it?’

“I also thought about it and thought, ‘Why am I not doing it?’ There are many reasons why I’m not doing it, but I said yes.”

Expanding on the conversation with his wife, Crutchlow said her advice got him across the line.

“I mean, she’s been by my side my whole career, as we know,” he explained.

“And I made decisions with her and she said to me – the words were, ‘Your life and our life has been an adventure our whole life. So why are we stopping now?’ So I said, ‘Okay, I’m going’.”

Crutchlow made his MotoGP debut in the premier class in 2011 with Tech3 and in 2015 joined Honda satellite squad LCR.

He rode with them full-time until the end of 2020 and made sporadic starts with Yamaha in the years that followed.

His last start was in 2023 for Yamaha in Japan as a wildcard. He was set to continue riding with the team as a wildcard on a three-year testing deal but withdrew due to injuries.

“I’m fully committed,” Crutchlow said of his return.

“I spent seven years of my life with this team and I have so many good memories.

“All the mechanics are the same mechanics I had when I was there. When they were calling me and this, that, and the other, that’s when I said ’Why not?’

“They call it a fairytale, I don’t know if I’d call it stupidity. But it’s good to be back and we’ll see how we go this weekend.”

Crutchlow said his affinity for LCR made the decision easier and that he would not have done the same for anyone else.

“I wouldn’t have done it for another team,” he said.

“If the factory Ducati team rang me, I wouldn’t have done it. If Aprilia rang me, I wouldn’t have done it. I did it because Lucio and the team asked me to do it.”

Ahead of the Mugello round, Crutchlow completed a test in Misano before being green-lit.

Crutchlow admitted that he was not as fast as he would have liked to have been in the pre-event hit-out.

“I expected to be slower than what I was – but when I was not fast enough, I was pissed off,” he said.

“I had the lap timer and I knew the lap time when I did when I was on the podium in Misano.

“And if I didn’t look at the lap timer, when I was riding, I [would have] thought ‘There is nobody who can go around this track faster than me. Ever. It’s f**king impossible. You know, I’m completely at the limit. Nobody will go faster than me’ — and I was 10 seconds too slow.

“This was in the first lap, and I looked down, I came in, I was thinking, ‘I don’t know whether to ask them whether the lap timer is broken or I just keep quiet for a minute’. But over the day, obviously, everything improved.

“They are hard to ride,” he said of the current-model bikes.

“But I don’t think they are any harder. It’s just hard with the amount of time I’ve had not riding. It’s as simple as that.”

MotoGP gets underway at Mugello on Friday evening with the first practice at 6:45pm AEST.