Pedrosa frustrated by grip issues

Dani Pedrosa was a disappointed man after taking eighth place at Silverstone on Sunday, where grip issues on his RC212V prevented him from pushing for a higher position.

The fastest lap time in second practice had indicated that Pedrosa was establishing a good race pace in preparation for qualifying later that afternoon, and he secured third spot on the starting grid before a crash at the end of the session.

Suffering bruising to both knees, Pedrosa was able to ride on Sunday but it was a problem with the bike that proved to be an obstacle. “Eighth is obviously a disappointing result because we were looking quite strong here on Saturday and I was confident,” he explained.

“However, we were lacking some grip from the beginning of the race and we couldn’t replicate the pace we were able to achieve in practice. The rear was spinning and sliding quite a lot and the front was pushing which meant that, even though I was pushing really hard, I wasn’t able to maintain my pace. It was frustrating because I could see the riders in front and I could stay with them but it was impossible to fight for position.”

Pedrosa also had a fall in the warm up session on Sunday morning, and praised the hard work of his team in repairing his bike. He was also relieved to have escaped without serious injury.

“The one positive thing from the weekend is that even though I had two crashes I wasn’t injured and I didn’t feel pain during the race today,” he said. “This means we can quickly put this weekend behind us and move on to the next races - the first one being Assen next weekend. I'd like to thank the team because they worked really hard this weekend and had to rebuild the bike twice.”