After qualifying in pole with a record-breaking lap of 1min 37.653sec, Cal Crutchlow suffered bitter disappointment in the latest round of the MotoGP at Jerez on Sunday.

After crashing out unhurt, the Ramsey resident later said that while he had the pace of Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa during Friday and Saturday, in the lower-grip conditions of the race he felt he had to push to match the ’cruising’ Marquez, leading to his eventual crash at Turn 1 while running fourth.

He suggested that Marquez would not have won the the Spanish GP so easily if the reigning champion had been using the same Honda bike as the LCR rider [Crutchlow].

The factory Honda team introduced a new carbon swinging-arm part at the beginning of the 2018 season, and both Marquez and team-mate Pedrosa used it on Sunday.

’That is my opinion,’ said Cal. He would still have had a great shot at winning the race, but I was pushing to make up ground.

’Marc was absolutely cruising today and you can see I had the pace all weekend, but when the grip is lower we didn’t have the pace because we didn’t have the same equipment.

’I am not allowed to say directly which part, but my bike is very good.’

Marquez admitted that the carbon swingarm part does provide a bit more grip. ’Basically on this circuit it looks like we [have a] little bit more grip with the used tyre,’ he said.