Dani Pedrosa played a leading role today at the Circuit de Catalunya in a spectacular race which twisted and turned from the start. A brake problem at the first corner caused him to go off the track and fall back to tenth place, from where he mounted an unstoppable comeback to finish in second place. His team-mate Andrea Dovizioso was less fortunate and finished fourteenth due to a fall ten laps from the end while battling for victory against Lorenzo.
As soon as the red lights went out, Dani Pedrosa once again demonstrated one of his characteristically dazzling starts and despite starting from the second row of the grid, he overtook all his rivals ahead of him to reach the first braking point in first place. However, the vibrations on the open straight after starting caused the front brake pads to come apart, causing him to reach the end of the straight and run wide at the first turn. Fortunately, despite going off the track, Pedrosa managed to get straight back on although knocked back to tenth place. Riding a second lap to the limit, the Repsol rider overtook five rivals and caught up with the French rider Randy de Puniet, who was in fourth place behind Jorge Lorenzo, Casey Stoner and Andrea Dovizioso, taking advantage of a good start.
The Italian rider managed to overtake Stoner on the second lap and got away from Lorenzo, while the Australian rider, after making a mistake, was caught and overtaken by Pedrosa. With Pedrosa back from the start, Dovizioso was the only rider able to take Lorenzo on, staying very close, waiting for the opportune moment to play his cards. However, ten laps from the end, a mistake on the La Caixa turn saw Dovizioso hit the floor. Still, the Repsol rider started riding again in fifteenth place and was able to move up one position to the detriment of Yoshikawa, the Valentino Rossi substitute. Dovizioso won two points which could prove crucial at the end of the season.
For Pedrosa, the battle was focussed on getting onto the podium: on the fifth lap, having just overtaken Randy De Puniet, he was able to take advantage of a mistake by Casey Stoner to put himself third. In an intense struggle with the Australian rider, Pedrosa managed to hold off all the attempts of the Ducati to overtake him and, when his team-mate fell, the third position which he was holding changed into a valuable and hard-fought second place, a position which he held to the end.
After this race, Pedrosa takes second place in the championship with 113 points and his Repsol Honda Team-mate, despite today’s incident, remains in third position with 91 points. Jorge Lorenzo remains at the head of the overall standings.
Dani Pedrosa, 2nd at 4.754 sec. >> Audio
“I made a really good start and was leading towards turn one. I had a bit of a front end shake on the way to the first corner but I didn’t think anything of it until I hit the brakes and… for a moment there was nothing. I was surprised because it was not such a bit shake, but anyway I pumped a few times and it came back, but by then it was too late and I had to run wide. I took it slowly to get back on track because I didn’t want to be to be penalised [for cutting the corner]. And then I tried to recover as quickly as possible and make up the positions I’d lost. I got past Casey when he made a mistake and we raced together for many laps. I was pushing as hard as possible but we had a bit of a front end issue through the race and the front end was closing in the corners – I think many riders were having this problem today though. I was able to hang on until the end of the race though and I’m happy enough with second place after that first lap. We’ve linked two good results together which was our target and now we must maintain this consistence and fight for the win at the next races”.
Andrea Dovizioso, 14th at 1’32.402 sec. >> Audio
“Today we had a really good race pace and we could have fought with Lorenzo for the win at the end of the race. Unfortunately though, from lap one my rear brake was not really working properly in the last part of the corner entry and this gave me some problems entering corners and mid corner. I was still able to be fast, but this issue put more weight on the front, it was very difficult to control – I was always at the limit. Then at turn nine of 15 lap I went a little bit over the limit and crashed. It’s a pity but I have to take the positives from today – and fighting at the front of the race is where we want to be and we achieved that for a time today. Anyway, I’m happy with my performance, and I’m sorry for the team because we are all working hard. Next time we’ll aim to be back up front again”.
