Puig keeps cool despite Pedrosa´s form

A calming and steadying influence on MotoGP title candidate Dani Pedrosa, his manager Alberto Puig was in a relaxed and determined frame of mind after the Catalan rider went back to the head of the general standings with his second place finish at the A-Style TT Assen.

Although he could not match race-winner Casey Stoner´s pace at the Dutch track, Pedrosa made it eight podiums in nine GPs so far this year in the Netherlands, taking advantage of Valentino Rossi´s Assen misfortune to go back to the top of the classification by a four point margin.

`It was an important result but not easy,´ said Puig of Pedrosa´s performance. `(Casey) Stoner was very fast and we couldn´t catch him. We got a second position after a good enough race and you cannot be that happy, but you also cannot be disappointed as we got good points.´

On Pedrosa´s consistency to date this season Puig commented, `Well he is trying! I think he is a clever guy, we are still missing some small things and we hope to get them as soon as possible because we think we are in a good position for fighting for the title. For sure, we will not give it away, we are going to try at our maximum for that.´

Meanwhile, when asked whether Pedrosa would follow in the path of his Repsol Honda team-mate Nicky Hayden in switching to HRC´s updated version of the pneumatic valve engine-equipped RC212V Puig answered simply, `I´m not thinking about that at the moment.´