Pedrosa gets his mind back up to speed

A relieved Dani Pedrosa spoke to the media about how he had few ill-effects on his first day back on a MotoGP machine after his arm pump surgery. Despite having some swelling Pedrosa said that the biggest problem he had was adjusting his mindset and getting his brain up to speed of the challenges of riding a MotoGP machine.

“It was different than expected,” said Pedrosa. “I had a lot of feelings on the bike, especially in this track because the bike wheelies quite fast! I didn’t remember how fast this bike was and I had a lot of problems controlling the wheelie and trying to stay full throttle and to control the spinning of the bike. The speed at the beginning of practice was tough, many riders were passing me! But the arm was better in the afternoon than the morning so I’m hoping that little by little I’ll get better feelings and also my riding will get better too because it’s not perfect after not riding for so long. Already though in the afternoon I went better and I didn’t do much work on the chassis or the bike, I just focussed on myself. I’m a little bit tired and I need to get some rest for tomorrow.”

With a track that was damp in patches during the opening session Pedrosa would have been forgiven for being nervous at the start of the session but he said that he was fine in the pitbox and it was only once he started to push that he felt some aphrehension however this was quickly put out of his mind as he attempted to get back up to speed.

“My first lap wasn’t bad but the second or third when I started to push was harder. It was hard at the beginning to keep full throttle because at the start it was hard to control the wheelie and the spin. At the beginning it was hard to adjust my brain to all the little things that you do on the bike but already in the afternoon I was going better and tomorrow I’ll have a better feeling for that.”

Having finished 7th fastest overall Pedrosa admitted that he would have to wait until tomorrow to really be able to gauge how his arm fared today.

“I had a little bit of swelling after riding so I’ll do some therapy to get the swelling down and tomorrow it’ll be important to see the level of swelling and the pain. I did a lot of short runs trying not to stress it too much. I was not as strong as before because it’s a long time not riding at this level. I was doing exercises but I was trying not to stress it too hard so that it wouldn’t swell as much. The good indicator was that after some riding the recovery was good.”