Why Crutchlow's future ambitions won't be broken by miserable 2020

It's an inescapable fact that Honda is in the throes of its worst start to a premier class season since it parked its woeful NR500 four-stroke project of the late 1970s and returned properly in 1982 with the brilliant NS500.

After five rounds of the 2020 MotoGP season, Honda is yet to register a podium finish. It's best-placed rider is currently Takaaki Nakagami on the year-old LCR-run RC213V in sixth in the standings having managed a best of fourth in the Andalusian Grand Prix.

Meanwhile, Honda's factory riders on 2020 bikes are 15th (Alex Marquez), 21st (Cal Crutchlow) and last (Stefan Bradl) with a combined total of 22 points. That's not even half of Nakagami's haul of 46.

Honda's pitiful earnings from the season so far are almost entirely a direct result of world champion Marc Marquez's absence through injury. Breaking his right arm in the opening Spanish Grand Prix, Marquez will be out of action until at least the end of October. Honda is standing perilously close to the edge of a year with no victories.

But shouldering the full blame of this frankly embarrassing set of results on the absence of its otherworldly talent would be folly, as the real issue is HRC itself and a 2020 RC213V seemingly developed in the depths of hell rather than Japan.

Honda was beset by handling problems with its new bike from the moment it rolled onto the cold Ricardo Tormo Circuit near Valencia last November. Honda eventually found the new aerodynamic package was causing the bike to suffer in turning more than its predecessor, but only on the final day of the Qatar test. And then the world shut down as COVID-19 sunk its icy claws into all of our lives.

When MotoGP returned in July at Jerez, Honda was forced to essentially run its 2020 engine in a 2019 shell, with only a few new bits on it. The Honda's "critical" front-end was still alive and well, as Marquez found out when he slid out of the lead of the Spanish GP. Ultimately, the bike's bad behaviour ruined his season. Despite this, Marquez was on course to dominate the grand prix, and likely would have done the same in the follow-up Andalusian race at the same venue.

In the reality Honda has found itself in without Marquez, naturally it would be able to fall back on Crutchlow. A key figure in the development of the RC213V in recent years, Crutchlow picked up the pieces in Australia in 2016 when Marquez crashed out of the lead to take his second MotoGP win that year.

"I can't do any more than what I can do with the package underneath me. We're going round in circles with it" Cal Crutchlow

In 2018 in Argentina, when Marquez was forced into a recovery ride after being handed a penalty, it was Crutchlow who ensured Honda still took maximum constructor points from that Sunday. And over the last two years, as the bike effectively ended Jorge Lorenzo's career and brought Dani Pedrosa's streak of winning a race in every season since 2006 to an end, Crutchlow was the only Honda rider other than Marquez to get the bike to the podium.

PLUS: The catch-22 Honda faces in MotoGP with Marquez sidelined

That he finds himself on just seven points down in 21st in 2020 (not helped by a broken wrist suffered in warm-up for the Spanish GP) just goes to show how bad the current RC213V is.

"I feel that maybe I'm not riding the best I've ever ridden, but that doesn't mean I'm not trying," Crutchlow said after finishing 17th in the Styrian GP. "But if I'm riding at 90%, with a good bike that should still be in the top eight.

"Then if I can drag more out of the feeling [of the bike], then I ride it at 95% maybe and that's top six. [If I] ride it at 100%, it's a podium. And I feel that I am riding maybe 90-95%.

"I can't do any more than what I can do with the package underneath me. We're going round in circles with it. We can try the bike in 15 different positions, and we can see on the data the bike does exactly the same thing."

Crutchlow has explained over the past few rounds that the 2020 Honda is struggling with an inertia problem into the corners. Corner entry used to be where Honda riders would gain most of their time, but given its poor performance in this regard - which also compromises exit speed, despite the RC213V having a massive amount of power pushing it along - Crutchlow reckons the time loss per lap is at least four-tenths right now. With 0.441s covering the top 11 in Q2 for the Styrian GP, that's a mammoth gap in MotoGP.

The Honda also doesn't seem to be working well with Michelin's 2020 tyre construction, the added grip from the new tyre pushing the front of the RC213V in the corners.

Crutchlow's MotoGP future remains uncertain. He will be moved out of Honda at the end of the year to make way for Alex Marquez, with Aprilia his only realistic option to extend his MotoGP career. Aprilia is still (at least publicly) sticking by Andrea Iannone for next year as it awaits to see if his appeal to have an 18-month doping ban overturned in October is successful.

And with Andrea Dovizioso confirming his Ducati departure, an unexpected - and very high-profile - new name has entered the rider market. Whether Dovizioso is within Aprilia's budget is another matter, but on the surface it's hard to see why Crutchlow would be the better fit.

Not least when you look at what Nakagami is doing currently next door in the LCR garage. Top 10 finishes in all races so far - with a best of fourth in the Andalusian GP - and a front row start for the Styrian GP is making Nakagami a constant threat for a podium challenge on Sundays at present. Though admitting Nakagami is riding very well, Crutchlow believes there's a very good reason for the Japanese rider's apparent kinship with the RC213V.

"If you look - it sounds a strange comment to make - at Taka's package last year and Taka's package again this year, it is maybe the best package because they are the most refined," Crutchlow notes. "He's getting on well with the 2019 bike, but last year we were developing that bike again and then we move onto another bike with an engine that maybe has some more inertia again."

If you stack up Alex Marquez's results to Crutchlow's, the Moto2 champion's best qualifying result has been a 17th, while Crutchlow managed sixth for the season-opener. The younger Marquez brother may have outscored him in the races, but this is something somewhat skewed by Crutchlow's injury and the fact Marquez has no relevant prior experience of the Honda to be wildly thrown off course by its problems.

A factory-supported HRC rider since 2018, Crutchlow has still been trying some new parts for Honda this year. But he also believes Honda is not as close to him as it used to be, while - for the second year in a row - engineers formally of his crew have been taken by Honda to help Alex Marquez's adaptation to MotoGP. As a result, Crutchlow's new electronics engineer (formerly his data engineer) is "five races old" - though he was quick to point out the "very, very good job" he is doing despite the fact he's "never touched the electronics before essentially the first race".

Nakagami, in contrast, has been receiving greater attention from head Honda figures as he currently looks its best hope of a podium. But if we consider a 2019 Ducati in the hands of Johann Zarco and what is essentially a 2019 Yamaha for Franco Morbidelli made it to the podium at Brno, it can just as easily be looked at that Nakagami is somewhat fumbling the play.

Crutchlow recently said he didn't think Honda has to change its bike philosophy in the wake of this annus horribilis. But Honda cannot escape the fact its bike - however much it likes to argue to the contrary - is difficult to ride, and the absence of its golden goose has only exposed this. And there is certainly a hint of frustration in Crutchlow at the current situation.

"After the session, you've had not the greatest result, you start to become disappointed, and disappointment is also a sign to say that you're still wanting to do well instead of just being not bothered" Cal Crutchlow

"We know the Honda's a bike that feels the same every year near enough," he said at Brno. "They haven't really looked into that massively. The other manufacturers seem to look into that a lot more with devices, the way they base the bike around the tyre, whereas essentially my bike is the same as last year with a bit of a stronger engine."

In Austria, he added: "I will still push the boundaries as much as possible, but one thing I've found clear this year is I don't want to keep crashing because I'm overriding the package underneath me, because it wastes my time. It wastes my time in the session, it wastes my team's time in being able to get me on track and do laps."

Easily Britain's best MotoGP talent since double 500cc world champion Barry Sheene, Crutchlow can rightfully stake his claim as one of the top MotoGP riders of the modern era. He definitely deserves his place on the grid. And despite his woes on the Honda, he's not once this year broadcast a lack of desire.

"If I didn't love it, I wouldn't still be here," Crutchlow said. "If I didn't love it and didn't want to do it, I wouldn't want to ride next year and I do. I still want to be able to be fast, I still am fast. I can guarantee you now, I am still fast.

"This is not about my speed, this is not about where I can finish, because at the moment I can't get the feeling with the bike and it's never really happened to me that bad in such a long space of time.

"But we've also understood the bikes better in other years, I feel. When I get on the bike, every single time I think we can do a good session and it doesn't work out.

"My motivation is high, my positivity is always good. I don't get on the bike thinking it's a job. After the session, [if] you've had not the greatest result, you start to become disappointed, and disappointment is also a sign to say that you're still wanting to do well instead of just being not bothered.

"I'm working as hard as ever, so it's not like I have lost any motivation, determination. I definitely haven't lost any speed, that's for sure."

Upon links to Aprilia, he said a move to the Italian marque would be a "great deal" for him, and trying to get the RS-GP onto the podium is a challenge that "excites" him.

Given what he's been able to drag out of a Honda over the last five years, a Crutchlow-mounted RS-GP would be a very potent combination indeed.