The three-time MotoGP winner has been called up to replace the injured Franco Morbidelli at SRT for the next three races after retiring from full-time racing at the end of last season.
Although Crutchlow is now the official Yamaha test rider, he has not ridden a motorcycle since a test in April, which made it even more difficult to get going again on Friday in Austria.
“Five months off, damn it, everything feels strange,” Crutchlow said after finishing last of the combined times 2.285 seconds off pace on Friday.
“Sitting in this chair with my lederhosen feels strange, let alone riding the bike.
“Handlebar positions, brake positions, everything just takes time to understand.
“And of course I drove the Honda for six years or whatever I drove with it, so my thinking process is still that feeling.
“Then I started testing with Yamaha, I understood the bike pretty well, I thought I made some improvements in Qatar because I had days with it.”
He admits that his initial feelings were “not very good” at full speed on the bike and was lulled into believing that he was going faster than he was.
“The first thing I did today was to get on my bike and release the clutch [leaving the garage] but couldn’t turn enough and when the lock was on and I let go of the clutch, my fingers touched the height adjuster.
“So the fingers didn’t come out, so the bike almost stopped and almost fell off.
“I just let go of the handlebars and the bike flew away. So you can imagine that it wasn’t the easiest first lap.
Cal Crutchlow, Petronas Yamaha SRT
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“The best part was, like always when you drive around, you think you’re driving fast, but the reality is, I might as well have worn an orange bib because I was behind Jack [Miller] for the first two rounds and I thought, ‘I’ll stay with him, that’s brilliant, damn good’.
“Then two or three laps later I ran a little far and they left.
“But I felt like I was flying, but my lap time wasn’t working.
“But the braking distance felt really short, the bike shook, Wheelie came out of the corners. I thought, ‘that’s it, I’m definitely driving well,’ but the reality was that I was five seconds or so behind the lap record. “
The Brit said he was able to quickly get back into the racing mindset in practice, which surprised him as his last race was in November 2020.
“In the test, you test against yourself, you look at your own data,” he said.
“And when you come back for the race weekend, you want to look at the data of the other drivers.
“That surprised me, but honestly when I said a month or five or six weeks ago that I would do it because I said I didn’t care.
“But when you’re in the garage, I guess I have this mentality of wanting to compete.
“I’m not going to compete, I can tell you now, but it felt weird that it bothered me at all, but it was fun.”