MotoGP | Pedrosa inherits the podium: “I didn't know what position I was in”

Dani Pedrosa wasn't entirely comfortable in Jerez. After not being able to get directly into Q2 due to a bad Friday, in which he crashed with the KTM he liked best and had to look for time, without finding it, with a second bike that didn't offer him a good feeling, he started on Saturday from 16th position on the starting grid, having to deal with a wet track due to the rain that fell in the morning.

But everything changed in the Sprint. In a true race of survival, with 15 crashes, the rider from Castellar del Vallés resisted with his RC16 to take fourth place in the final stages and cross the finish line just 50 thousandths of a second behind Fabio Quartararo, third. However, the Frenchman was later penalized eight seconds for failing to comply with the minimum tire pressure rule, giving Pedrosa his first podium since winning Valencia 2017, when he was still a full-time driver.

Even before knowing that he would be promoted to third, the #26 analyzed the weekend up to that point, starting from the problems in qualifying: “I couldn't have done better in qualifying, and starting so far back is never positive. The track was a bit “It was humid in some places and if you walked over the patches you risked falling.”

With the chaos of crashes in the race, Pedrosa had difficulty identifying his position, so much so that he didn't know he was fighting for the podium: “After the first two laps I got behind Fabio and I wanted to overtake him, but the crashes piled up in front of me. First two riders, then three. I didn't know what position I was in, so on the last lap I didn't know we were third and fourth. In fact, I thought we were fifth and sixth.”

“When I returned to the garage they told me that I had missed the podium by a hair. On the finishing straight I couldn't see the board because I was trying to overtake Fabio. Maybe I'm getting old and that's why I didn't see the board; maybe I have to get my eyes checked,” he added, joking and referring to his age.

“I did an intelligent race. When the track is like this, it's always dangerous. You have to be very concentrated because, in this type of race, at the slightest mistake you're out. I didn't have much fun, but when you start to recover positions the feeling is better than when the opposite happens”, concluded Pedrosa.