Cal Crutchlow has expressed his dissatisfaction in Race Direction’s decision to sanction him with a ride through penalty for a marginal jump start at Argentina’s second round of MotoGP on Sunday, which the British talent ‘completely disagrees’ with.

The LCR Honda Castrol rider was running in sixth position before completing his ride through penalty, which saw him re-enter the circuit in P19. A charge in the remaining laps allowed him to climb up to P13 at the finish line, recording times that would’ve seen him in contention for a podium.

“First of all I want to thank my team for a great weekend and a positive race pace, I think we showed today that we would have been able to fight for the podium and probably would have had a good, safe second place,” Crutchlow commented.

“But we didn’t, the stewards said that I jumped the start, which I completely disagree with, as do my team, and we’re disappointed with this ride through penalty. But we accept the situation, we had to do a ride through and then I rode the best job that I could for the rest of the race with a good pace. Now I have to continue to look forward to Texas where we’ll plan to do another good race.”

LCR Honda team principal Lucio Cecchinello added: “I am absolutely disappointed with what the Race Direction have done with us today. The penalty that Cal got was tremendously hard and his movement at the start was irrelevant, really irrelevant. We’re talking about 1.5-2 centimetres, it’s really nothing.

“However, we cannot do very much, all we can do is put forward our opinion at the next committee meeting that the penalty for this kind of infringement is far too hard. There is no relation between the potential gain of a couple of a centimetres compared to the 30-second penalty you get doing a ride through. So we are really disappointed, but we have to look forward and I can’t wait to be in Texas.”

Crutchlow, who captured victory at Argentina in 2018, sits sixth in the championship standings as the series heads to Circuit of the Americas on 14 April.