What's behind Crutchlow's MotoGP rise?

I don't know a lot about Cal Crutchlow's culinary skills, but I'd hazard a guess that he'd cook you a steak just how you like it, or maybe poach vegetarians some eggs to a velvety-yolk perfection. (Sorry, vegans, I don't know what Crutchlow would make you.)

I say that based on the innate ability he shows time after time in MotoGP to make precisely the right calls, and judge tricky, scarcely scientific situations sublimely, with his second career victory at Phillip Island yet another example of that.

Crutchlow loves a chat, but one thing he's incredibly unlikely to tell you is that he's the most-talented rider on the grid. He's said a few times this year, even when things were tough at the start of the season, that if you threw Marc Marquez on his LCR Honda, the newly crowned champion would still be winning.

So how has he ended up winning a pair of races in a single season on a satellite machine?

The common thread with both of Crutchlow's 2016 victories has been judgement - his willingness to not so much roll the dice with abandon as to look at what might work for him, and then back himself on a path that other riders are perhaps not equipped or willing to navigate.

"I was adamant that that's what I was doing, so is that a gamble?" he said after winning at Brno. "I don't think it is. It's what I wanted to do and I did it."

On that wet Sunday in the Czech Republic, most riders opted for the soft wet tyres. However, the rain stopped about an hour before the race, so Crutchlow changed to the hard-compound wets. He had some pain early, but then galloped through the field as the front soft gave up on the drying surface, "playing with them", as he became Britain's first premier-class winner since Barry Sheene in 1981.

Crutchlow played that day to perfection, but was already known as being one of the - if not the - strongest rider on the grid in wet or mixed conditions. Since that day, he's been asked several times about looking forward to wet races, like he does a rain dance each evening, looking to cash in.

Each time, Crutchlow has insisted that he'd much prefer dry conditions. At Phillip Island last Thursday, he said a wet weekend would be a "disaster for everybody". Three days later, he had not just had that dry race he wanted, but he'd won it.

"Nice to win one in the wet and the dry, because people think you can only ride in the rain when you win in the rain," he said.

Crutchlow was quick in all conditions at Phillip Island. The only time he missed out was third practice, strangely, not getting in a quick lap between rain showers in a genuinely mixed session. That meant he had to contest the first phase of qualifying with the likes of Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo and Maverick Vinales, vying for two spots in the second phase. But, given the conditions, everybody else was fighting for one spot - Crutchlow was a casual 1.985 seconds clear.

Marquez, as he has done so often this year, played a blinder in Q2 to grab pole on slicks, and Crutchlow was frustrated later to be second. He wished he'd trusted his instincts and also tried slicks, based on what he learned in Q1. But, in the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter too much.

By the time it was Sunday, riders had barely done any dry running, so the warm-up was extended by 10 minutes to 30. Late in the piece, Marquez and Crutchlow tried the hardest front slick tyre. They learned enough to decide to use it in the race, switching on the grid.

Five riders made that call all up, going against the popular grain of running the soft in cool weather. Marquez and Aleix Espargaro crashed at Turn 4, Crutchlow won, Maverick Vinales was third and Jack Miller finished 10th.

Of course, Marquez was leading the race when he crashed, which is a big part of why Crutchlow won. But Crutchlow still had Rossi - suddenly second after slicing his way through the field from 15th - just 1.8s behind him when Marquez crashed, and he strolled away into the distance to win by more than four seconds.

You could also argue that Crutchlow may well have caught Marquez over the remaining 18 laps, having taken six tenths out of him in his first two laps in clean air. And that while both Marquez and Crutchlow made the right call when it mattered - only Crutchlow made it work.

But, whatever, even finishing second would have represented another impressive result in what's been a massive recovery in 2016, given how bad it looked at one stage.

His Qatar season opener was blighted by electronics problems as Honda played a massive game of catch-up, and Crutchlow crashed in four of the first five races, and was 20th in the championship.

Around that time, LCR was being linked as a possible candidate for satellite Suzuki machinery in 2017. As the rider market moved rapidly around Crutchlow, some in the paddock discussed a supposed mid-season performance clause to stay with LCR, which he was in danger of falling short of.

The biggest issue was based on Honda's acceleration deficit and having to try to go with something resembling Marquez's super-human efforts under braking to offset that. On the new and at times unfriendly Michelin front tyre, that was infinitely more easily said than done.

Sixth at Barcelona in round seven gave him his first top 10 of the season, and first back-to-back points finishes. Then he crashed out of the rain at Assen, and was livid. That was a Crutchlow sort of day, and he knew it.

After eight races, Crutchlow had scored 20 points and was 18th in the championship. In the eight races since, Crutchlow has scored 121 points, become a two-time MotoGP winner and risen to sixth in the standings. In that timeframe since Assen, only new champion Marquez has scored more points, with a haul of 128.

Crutchlow is the anti-Lorenzo in MotoGP at the moment. The outgoing champion is almost tip-toeing around whenever it's cold or wet. The front end of the Yamaha does struggle somewhat in those conditions, but it's even like Lorenzo is riding a different brand of bike to Yamaha team-mate Rossi. He lacks grip, feel, trust and therefore speed.

On the other hand, Crutchlow has buckets of confidence and is riding his Honda impressively. He probably could've won at the Sachsenring but still finished second, then was one of a group of riders to jump the start at the Red Bull Ring.

But since winning at Brno, he's finished second at Silverstone, eighth at Misano and fifth at both Aragon and Motegi. However, he lamented a mid-race off in Japan, where he again opted to run the harder front tyre, which cost him a chance to fight for another podium.

"There's no doubt I'm in a good moment in my career," he said after winning at Phillip Island. "I said that three or four races ago and it seems to be getting better, which is good."

A look at Crutchlow's qualifying performances, splitting the season so far in half, is also telling. His average grid position in the first eight races was 8.875, call it ninth, and the final spot on the third row of the grid. In the latest block of eight Saturdays, his average has been 6.25, which conversely you can round down to the final spot on the second row of the grid.

The benefits of qualifying further up the order need little explanation. But it makes a big difference in MotoGP when you consider that there are 10 Ducatis in the field, and that even the elderly GP14.2s - basically what Crutchlow had during his 2014 in red - are all-but-impossible to pass in a straightline on a Honda.

"I remember riding here with Ducati and we never stopped accelerating down that hill," he said at Aragon last month of the circuit's long back straight. "Didn't even need to take any risks under braking. I went as fast in the wet with the Ducati as what I'm going in the dry now."

Honda has been making inroads with the new control electronics as the season has gone on, and there have been suggestions that a big step was made during the summer. Crutchlow has been doing his bit, including a July trip to Sepang when Ducati and Yamaha sent test riders to a Michelin-organised session. While that test was marred by poor track conditions, he is enjoying the benefits as the factory makes inroads and is then able to pass them down to satellite teams such as his.

That means the bike underneath Crutchlow has been becoming more competitive. On paper, and even if only by the smallest of margins, he has been having to ask less of it under braking.

He has also been racing with a new frame since the British Grand Prix. While Crutchlow says the update - raced by Dani Pedrosa at Barcelona in June but shelved - is not a game-changer, it has offered enough positives to encourage him stick with it.

"I felt strong at Silverstone and the races after," he said. "It just suits my style a little better, but I also have a disadvantage in one area. We know that. I'm just riding in a good way. Sure, I don't have a full factory bike, but it's very close."

Crutchlow has remained tight-lipped on those pluses and negatives, but in discussing the bike at Aragon he said, "Maybe it seems heavier at the end of the race", and suggested that was one reason Pedrosa elected not to stick with it.

And it was quick at Phillip Island, a circuit lacking the exits from slow corners the Honda riders dread. The wet nature of Friday and Saturday meant that teams had a very limited window - Sunday's warm-up - to find a set-up for the race.

Rossi and Vinales spoke of basically starting with what they wanted to try on Friday morning, which in turn was based on what they finished February's pre-season test with.

That would have no doubt applied up and down the grid, but starting the warm-up with a good baseline and then knowing whether to stick or twist - and how much to twist - was vital. It was a similar story at Silverstone, after Saturday's washout.

The big factory teams didn't have the time to make the advantage offered by their manpower and reams of data from previous years work for them. Suzuki found something good there for Vinales and he won, and LCR did the same for Crutchlow at Phillip Island.

But that is a relatively small part of what happened last weekend. And, if anything, it's a tiny little piece of payback, given the class war that has existed in MotoGP, as even as the championship is compared to Formula 1.

While the bespoke electronics are gone this year, the bigger factories still had the best and most brains to work out how to get to grips with the new, less refined Magneti Marelli systems.

Ducati has led the way in particular - it was smart last year in tapping into what its customers were doing with the Open-class software, which was the starting point for this year's electronics. By contrast, satellite teams have been sitting at the kids' table, waiting for findings to trickle down.

But now that learning has slowed down, the gap has been closing. Before Miller won for Marc VDS at Assen, it had been the best part of 10 years since a satellite rider won a grand prix. Admittedly, we have had some extenuating circumstances - we've now had three of the last nine races won by non-factory riders, while Ducati and Suzuki have also ended droughts.

Before the first of those satellite wins, when it was still all Yamaha and Honda at the front, Crutchlow opined that the competition would close up in the second year of the control electronics.

"I think, next year, we'll see a lot more closer field because the rest will have worked it out and the others can't really move from what they've got now," he said in June.

"Whoever has the best electronics at the moment is working best with the electronics, they can't go outside of that parameter of what they have."

Sure, we have had some crazy races this year, but the playing field is about as level as it has ever been, which is what Dorna set out to achieve with the new electronics. And Honda seems quietly confident it will give its riders a more civilised engine to use next year.

That is more good news for Crutchlow, who has found a prime time to hit career-best form. If anything, given the confidence and momentum he has built in recent months, the end of the season next month is bad news.

But, given how things looked a few months ago, the positives far outweigh the negatives.