Tuesday, 14 July 2009
Heading back to the scene of a season-changing 2008 crash, Dani Pedrosa returns to Germany this weekend after ending his win drought in Laguna Seca at the last round.
When Dani Pedrosa surged to a significant lead in last year’s Sachsenring contest he appeared to be on course to extend his championship advantage, but his costly crash in the wet at the end of the start-finish straight saw him lose the standings lead, suffer a hand injury and crucially lose momentum in the title fight.
Effectively Pedrosa’s nightmare run of accidents and injuries started at that moment in the German 2008 MotoGP contest, so it was a highly crucial result for the Spanish star at the last round in Laguna Seca when he crossed the line in first place for the first time in more than a year.
Pedrosa responded perfectly on the pressure building up on him as a factory Honda rider, taking the holeshot in the States and never looking back. Whilst his young championship-chasing rivals Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner suffered big crashes at Laguna, Pedrosa finally enjoyed a fully productive weekend and the maximum points haul means he can go into the Alice Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland confident of ‘exorcising’ more demons.
Indeed, despite last year’s mishap Pedrosa has a good record in Germany, having scored three previous Grand Prix victories there - twice in the 250cc class in 2004 and 2005, and again in MotoGP in 2007. He will need another top result in order to claw back the 59 point deficit by which he trails Valentino Rossi in the general classification.
“I’ve had some good results at this track and I take a lot of confidence into the race weekend at Sachsenring because we’re probably in the best shape we’ve been in for a while,” stated the Honda star. “The win in Laguna Seca was really important for me and the team because it proves we’ve been making progress and we now have the pace to win races.”
Pedrosa continued, “However, we can’t take anything for granted and I’m sure our rivals will be strong again and determined to fight back. I really like the Sachsenring circuit too and, despite what happened last year, I think we can be competitive again here.”
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