Pedrosa Undecided on Race

Henny Ray Abrams | October 14, 2010

PHILLIP ISLAND, AUSTRALIA, OCT 14 – Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa is making no guarantees that he’s going to race in Sunday’s 16th round of the MotoGP World Championship at Phillip Island.The Spaniard skipped last weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix to recover from surgery after breaking his left collarbone in Japan, now almost two weeks ago. Pedrosa feels much better, but doesn’t know how the collarbone, which was plated with eight screws, will react once he takes to the very fast, picturesque circuit above the Bass Straits. Rain is forecast for Friday, which means Pedrosa may not get a full test of his fitness, but he should know by the end of practice whether he will continue.”I’m doing more or less OK,” he said in the paddock on Thursday afternoon. “Travelling to Australia was not so easy, but actually this could have been the easiest part of the weekend.”I decided to come here because I am feeling a bit better but also I need to be clever and not take any risks with my recovery.”He admitted there “was a very small possibility to ride in Malaysia, but we spoke with the doctors and we decided it was better to wait for another week.”Pedrosa crashed on his first flying lap of Friday practice in Motegi when his throttle stuck wide open.”The throttle was still open when I braked,” he said. “I closed it but the bike continued with power (continued to accelerate).”Pedrosa flew almost immediately to Spain where he had surgery. Because he was in the hospital, he didn’t see teammate Andrea Dovizioso chase Casey Stoner to the end, nor did he see the epic battle between Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo.”I didn’t watch the race,” he said. “I was in hospital and was sleepy after the anesthetic.”The plate in the collarbone is better, but he’s nowhere near 100% fitness.”I have some pain from the muscles across the back of my shoulders and in my chest and there’s quite a lot of stiffness. We are still working on this,” he said, adding, “my only goal for now is to ride in tomorrow’s practice session, then we will see. My aim is to get back to racing and feel perfect on the bike. I hope I can do that in the final two races of the season.”The biggest problem here could be to control the power of the bike and also maintaining physical endurance. If it’s really windy it could be very hard. I still don’t know if I can do a good race on Sunday.”As for the championship, Pedrosa has a 47 point gap on Rossi for second, “and I think it will be no risk to lose the position. I can manage it,” he said.