Pedrosa Hoping For The Best

Henny Ray Abrams | June 11, 2009

Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa hopes to take part in his home Grand Prix at the Circuit of Catalunya, but he’s not making any guarantees.The rider from Sabadell, northwest of the circuit, injured a tendon and his upper femur in a near highside in Saturday morning practice for the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello two weeks ago. Doctors diagnosed a crack in the bone as it goes into the hip socket, as well as a hyper-extended tendon. Then came a crash in the Sunday flag-to-flag GP, soon after the Spaniard switched from rain tires to slicks. He did no further damage, according to his physician, but he also did himself no favors.Rather than undergo therapy, Pedrosa was told to rest, which he did in the interim between races, while also getting pain-killing injections.”Tomorrow I will try the bike and I will see exactly what is the condition,” he said on today at the Circuit of Catalunya. “Anyway, this week after Mugello I was resting all the time. I did almost nothing, just because this kind of injury needs time is what every doctor said. It’s not the injury like if you do things it will improve. No, what makes improve this injury is to have time. Everybody knows we don’t have, so we will try tomorrow to have some injection in exactly in the point to try to make me feel less pain and we will check.Pedrosa explained that he’d injured the hip during “a very big almost highside. So in the movement I felt a big crack here inside and from that point on-this was Saturday morning-so from that point on it was almost impossible to ride the bike. And the injections I get there were enough to make me feel less pain.”Now is better, because I’ve been resting one week, a little more than week. So sure it’s much better, but I will know exactly when I’m on the bike.”If Pedrosa is healthy, he has a new chassis to try. “It’s just a modified frame for improve the stability on the braking. This is the main target,” he said.And if he gets through the weekend unscathed, he’ll take part in Monday’s test, one of only two during the season.”If I can handle this pain or the pain is gone or whatever, I will push for the test. If maybe the condition is not good enough, then we will consider to not do it.”