Pedrosa on top after ‘tough’ Thailand test

Dani Pedrosa has continued his impressive pre-season form as he topped the Buriram test on combined time sheets, as he was just one of three riders to set a lap time in under 90 seconds across the three days. 

The Repsol Honda ace looks like he could well be a threat in 2018, having had a positive end of the season in 2017, winning at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia, Spain. Pedrosa was 2nd on combined time sheets in Malaysia, making him the most consistent front-runner across the two three-day testing programmes.

“We leave Thailand with positive feelings. The test was quite tough as the temperatures were high, and we worked really hard over the three days. In the end we didn’t have many tyres left, so we had to carefully manage the planning of our work,” said a jubilant Pedrosa.

“We worked on many aspects of the bike’s setup, and step-by-step we improved our speed and pace. Among other things, today we tested a carbon swing arm that’s a new area for us to work on, so we’re still in the process of learning and of finding the feeling.

“I’m very happy with the job my team is doing at the track and with what the engineers are doing back in Japan. They’re really helping us to improve, and this is good and gives us confidence. Hopefully we’ll be able to continue this trend at the final test in Qatar, which will be very interesting as conditions will be different.”

Dani Pedrosa has seemed revitalised since his career-saving and career-risking surgery to solve an arm-pump problem in 2015. Having been runner-up in the world championship on three occasions, 2018 looks like the 31-year-old could be in with a shout once more.

Testing resumes at Losail at the start of March, when all eyes will be on Dani Pedrosa again, to see if he can remain near the top of the leaderboard ahead of the first GP of the year, at the same venue towards the end of the month.