Crutchlow urges teams to get "creative" with fairing designs

Following the ban of the aerodynamic winglets pioneered by Ducati at the end of last year, teams have been attempting to recover the lost downforce with a new generation of fairings.

Ducati's designs have been the most distinctive so far, the Borgo Panigale marque testing a radical fairing in Qatar that was ultimately ditched because it ended up costing the bike too much top speed.

The Italian team then came up with a revised fairing first tested by Michele Pirro and Danilo Petrucci in the summer break at Misano before being used in last weekend's Brno race by Jorge Lorenzo.

LCR rider Crutchlow called Ducati's new fairing "fantastic", and called on MotoGP's other manufacturers to experiment more with their own designs.

"I think [Ducati] have always been the cleverest with this," said Crutchlow of the new bodywork, a variant of which was also trialled by Pramac rider Petrucci at Brno.

"They are always the one to make the best scenario with regards to reading rules right and making good designs for things and you take your hat off to them.

"It would be good if some other manufacturers did similar things and tried some new, creative options."

When asked if he was referring to Honda, Crutchlow refused to single out his own team in terms of producing new parts.

"I'm not saying anybody, I'm just saying it would be good if some of the other manufacturers [tried more]," he said. "It would be good to see some different bikes, have a few different things."

Crutchlow eschews new bodywork

Honda also brought a new fairing to Brno, which was tested by factory pair Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa as well as Crutchlow.

But while Marquez and Pedrosa both raced the new bodywork - the two Spanish riders using slightly different versions - Crutchlow stuck to his standard fairing for the Czech race.

"I just have a different feeling with them, I don't feel the benefit of them in certain areas and then in other areas, I feel they upset the bike a lot," Crutchlow explained.

"It is so strange because the plan for them is to try and do what they did last year [with the winglets] but they feel completely different.

"Obviously everybody is trying to make what we had last year but they are completely different to me and to most others.

"If they did feel the same, they would be running them every race and they don't. Last year people were running wings every race."