Cal Crutchlow counting on control ECU fix before next MotoGP race

Crutchlow was plagued by engine-braking issues at Losail all weekend, an issue he labelled as "completely strange" after practice turned into a "disaster".

The factory Honda team was able to rectify electronic problems experienced by Marc Marquez early in the event but a fix for Crutchlow's woes did not make its way down to the satellite squad.

Crutchlow was able to ride around that problem to qualify 10th on Saturday, and he made it up to seventh early in the race before crashing due to a fresh electronics issue.

"I do not think it is a problem with our team," Crutchlow, who finished third in Argentina last year, said.

"But we should have been able to finish the race with the problems we had and then something new happened and that is it.

"We do not think it is a person's fault, we think it is hardware with some of the controlled ECU."

In the Qatar race, Crutchlow's ECU was operating as though it was in a completely different part of the circuit to his bike.

While he also struggled with acceleration - a problem shared with the factory pair - he could at least draw a positive from his race pace compared to those up the road.

"I felt really good on the bike, Maverick [Vinales] and Dani [Pedrosa] were not going fast and honestly it was an easy fifth place for me," Crutchlow said of the race.

"I started to have to change how I rode because we had our problems all weekend so I had to just ride around those problems.

"Once I started doing that I felt OK but in the race we had a completely big problem with the bike and it caused us to crash.

"We were competitive enough. We were away from some guys that we thought were going to be fast and they weren't particularly."