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Early birthday present for Crutchlow
RAMSEY resident Cal Crutchlow gave himself the perfect early birthday present when he scorched to a stunning podium finish in the AirAsia Australian Grand Prix early on Sunday morning.
The Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team rider turns 27 today (Monday) and he kicked off the celebrations with a fantastic ride to third position in front of a record crowd of 53,100 fans packed into the spectacular Phillip Island track near Melbourne.
After Dani Pedrosa’s early crash out of the lead on lap two, Crutchlow kept his team-mate Andrea Dovizioso, Alvaro Bautista and Stefan Bradl at bay in an exciting early battle for third place.
Eight laps had been completed when Crutchlow commenced a devastating attack that saw him comfortably streak away from the chasing trio. At the end of lap eight he pulled a 1.050sec advantage over Dovizioso, but just four laps later his red-hot pace had seen him establish a gap of more than 3.5s.
Still feeling below par after being struck down by a nasty bout of bronchitis earlier in the week, but he was able to maintain a fast and consistent pace in sunny but cool conditions to finish a richly deserved third position.
It was Cal’s second rostrum finish of a fantastic second season in MotoGP and he maintains an outside chance of claiming a top-five finish in the overall world championship standings with one round remaining at Valencia in less than a fortnight’s time.
‘I’m really happy with this result because it is a great way to finish this period of three races in a row. After the disappointment of running out of fuel while battling for the podium on the last lap in Japan and then crashing in Sepang, I really needed a positive result here and that’s what I got,’ said Cal.
Considering how ill I’ve felt with the fever and bronchitis, to be back on the podium is fantastic.’
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Weather for Isle of Man
Wednesday 22 May 2013
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 6 C to 12 C
Wind Speed: 24 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 6 C to 11 C
Wind Speed: 32 mph
Wind direction: North west
