It has been a more difficult 2016 so far for veteran MotoGP™ title contender Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda Team) than for teammate Marc Marquez, but the Sabadell native is now refocused after the summer break and ready to attack the second half of the season - beginning with the NeroGiardini Motorrad Grand Prix von Österreich. With podium finishes already in 2016 despite the steeper curve of challenges the 3-time world champion has encountered, Pedrosa is eager to get back to work and discover the spectacular Austrian circuit on the GP machine for the first time – having so far only ridden the track on the Honda RC213V-S.
"There’s a long time where the bike flows a lot - it only stops hard at two corners."Dani Pedrosa: “The chance to spend some time on holiday with my friends has been very good but it’s now time to focus again on the work ahead. We went to the Red Bull Ring for some filming last June, and we were able to do a few laps on the RC213V-S, which is quite an amazing and fast bike. The circuit is in the middle of the woods, a beautiful place indeed. It’s short but it’s quite interesting because the width changes a lot so that there are very wide parts and some narrower ones. I would say the hardest thing is that there’s only one line and that makes overtaking difficult. Anyway there are two or three points at which there’s pretty hard braking and where you can overtake because the track is wide. It has a combination of corners that include more right-handers than left-handers, but above all there’s a long time where the bike flows a lot. It only stops hard at two corners. It’s nice to see how you go up the hill and then back down. It will be interesting racing at a new track and to see how our bike goes there. Hopefully we’ll be able to do a good job and have a good weekend.”