Pedrosa fourth as he reacquaints himself with Laguna

Dani Pedrosa finished FP1 at the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix in fourth place on the timesheet and felt there was room for improvement as he got to grips with his Bridgestone tyres for the first time on Californian soil.

After 31 laps of the Laguna Seca circuit Pedrosa marked his best time of 1'22.637 right at the end of the session, making steady improvements as he continues to find his way back from injury.

Pedrosa suffered a DNF at Assen in the last round as he crashed in The Netherlands when riding through the pain barrier with an ongoing hip injury. Although he is still to regain full fitness the Spaniard is doing far better then last year at Laguna when he had to leave on Friday evening due to injuries picked up in a costly crash in Germany shortly before.

Just over half a second behind paceman Valentino Rossi on Friday, Pedrosa looked back on the session saying, “It was good to try the track again. At the beginning I took my time and tried to get some rhythm, then finally I tried to push a little bit more. We are still some distance from the top but for a first run it looks ok for the moment.”

He continued, “It’s a different feeling on the Bridgestone tyres but they feel ok and we will try to improve on Saturday.”

On his physical condition, Pedrosa added, “We did a lot of laps and at the end of the session my hip was a little bit painful, but it wasn’t too bad and I was able to ride the bike as normal. That’s important here because this is a circuit where the machine wheelies and shakes quite a lot so you need to be able to control it.”