A damaging weekend for Dani Pedrosa

Dani Pedrosa may be called an alien by some, but his performance during the Qatar Grand Prix will surely have brought the Spaniard back to earth with a bang. 

He was comfortably outpaced by his teammate Andrea Dovizioso throughout the entire weekend and a look at the inconsistency of Pedrosa’s race pace provides an indication as to why the Italian defeated his highly rated teammate.

Dani had a poor qualifying session that left him starting the race from seventh on the grid but after a trademark start took the lead into turn one and set competitive lap times for the initial stage of the race before his pace become more and more erratic. The Honda rider had not completed a run of more than seven flying laps during practice and qualifying so it would seem that he did not have his bike properly setup to deal with longer stints.

Pedrosa struggled for consistency during the race. His first seven laps were the only period when he showed consistency but once he was through this stage of the race his performance seemed to fall off a cliff. 


To illustrate the downturn in the Spaniard’s pace during different stages of the race the average time for his first eight flying laps was 1m56.876s. For his next eight laps Pedrosa’s pace dropped off to an average of 1m57.415s. At this point of the race Pedrosa was the only leading rider to suffer from this problem, in comparison Dovizioso averaged 1m56.446s and 1m56.361s. Compounding the woes of the number 26 garage even satellite Honda rider Randy de Puniet improved from 1m56.756s to 1m56.553s.

Even when the speed of lap time is discounted from Pedrosa the alarming rate that he lost speed is very worrying for the Spaniard. While his stable-mates went faster through the race Pedrosa’s relative pace worsened. This strikes of a setup problem on the bike. It seemed that once Pedrosa entered the middle stint of his race he was unable to lap consistently and his pace slackened.

Pedrosa’s longest single stint in practice was for nine laps (an out lap, seven flying laps and an in lap), De Puniet in contrast had a series of longer stints including one 15 lap stint in the first session. Pedrosa might be best served in utilising a practice strategy similar to the Frenchman in future rounds in his attempts to learn how to setup the new Honda for the handling changes that inevitably occur during a Grand Prix.

Dovizioso lapped comfortably in the 1m56’s for the entire race and beat his teammate by nearly 15 seconds or 0.6 seconds per lap. It is a startling fall from grace for Pedrosa who has been the golden boy of HRC since Honda lost Valentino Rossi to Yamaha.

Over the course of the weekend Dovizioso was quicker in every session but in practice two and qualifying the average time difference was very slight, in the race Pedrosa clearly had no confidence on the bike once the characteristics changed and the tyres began to wear. As a result he had to ease right off and lost large chunks of time to the leaders.

Pedrosa will need to work hard with his engineers to get more confidence in the new bike. When a rider with this much talent has such a problem with inconsistency there are clearly issues that need addressing. Pedrosa had good race pace at the start; he just could not maintain his mid 1m 56s laps while all the other leading runners could do so.

Will the opening round of the season prove to be a precursor to Dani Pedrosa losing his status as an extra terrestrial or will it spur him on to achieving the results expected of the Honda team leader? One thing for sure is that while Qatar answered questions in relation his opponents for Pedrosa the opening round will pose even more questions after an equally trying winter. The season may still be in its infancy but Pedrosa knows that unless he can sort out the setup of his motorcycle on longer runs he will leave himself too much of a mountain to climb in the title chase and could also find himself discarded by HRC.