LCR Honda rider Cal Crutchlow said he felt like he'd just drunk “15 pints” after fighting to eighth place in the MotoGP French Grand Prix despite spending Saturday night in hospital.
Crutchlow was hospitalised after a huge crash at the end of Q1 on Saturday, and while he escaped any “major injuries”, blood in his lungs meant he wasn't able to be discharged until Sunday morning.
Declared fit to ride, Crutchlow felt he could have challenged for the podium, but admits he “wasn't willing to push” out of fear of suffering another crash and ending up in hospital again.
“We have to accept it, I'm disappointed with the race result for what could have been,” he told BT Sport.
“I had a better pace than [Danilo] Petrucci Friday and Saturday morning, and he's just finished second.
“So in the end, that's why I'm disappointed about the result. But in the end, I'm glad to finish, glad to be able to race.
“It was a long afternoon, evening, morning, so to be on the grid was even good enough I think.
“If you'd have known some of the stuff that went on halfway through last night, it was a bit of a drama.
“My team supported me very well, they put a bike together that was capable of being at the front.
“It's just I couldn't be… I was not willing to crash, I was not willing to push at the start of the race to risk all to be in hospital again, because I would have been in hospital again no matter what the situation was.”
He added: “I just couldn't move very well [on the bike]. I feel groggy more than anything, I feel I've been run over by a truck, or had 15 pints or whatever.
“But in the grand scheme of things we came off very lightly.”
Crutchlow says his crash at the end of FP4 meant he had no time to change into a fresh set of leathers with an unused airbag in it, and this saw his hip take the full brunt of the impact with the tarmac.
“I had the crash in FP4, then I only had one bike, then I went into the Q1,” he said.
“Obviously there's been a lot of questions why my airbag never went off, but it was my own fault, I never changed the leathers.
“The airbag had gone off simply before, I couldn't get the other leathers on fast enough to get back out.
“So I kept the leathers [I had on]. For sure they definitely would have taken some of the impact with the airbag. “
