HRC has officially announced now that Dani Pedrosa will miss the Dutch round of the MotoGP Championship. Breaking his collarbone back at the French GP, Pedrosa’s place on the disabled list was extended when it was discovered that bone fragments were still lurking in his shoulder. Pedrosa underwent yet another surgery to repair his collarbone, but his return to racing has been an uncertainty lately, as some in the assembled MotoGP press have suggested the Spaniard will sit out the rest of the season.

Whatever the status may be on Pedrosa’s return, the Ductch TT marks the third race absence for the Repsol Honda rider, and accordingly the team is obliged to replace him. Moving up San Carlos Gresini Honda’s Hiroshi Aoyama, the Japanese rider will swing a leg over the third Honda factory team bike, while Marco Simoncelli rounds out the group on the fourth factory bike that’s still nestled in the Gresini garage.

Tech 3’s other rider is in the spotlight this week, after Colin Edwards turned some attrition up front into a broken-collarbone-podium for the French team at Silverstone. Cal Crutchlow’s collarbone, fractured in a cold-tire crash in Qualifying, has been repaired, but only after a delay of a couple of days to assess possible damage to several vertebrae.

Crutchlow is known as one of the toughest competitors in motorbike racing. Given Edwards’s attempt to ride the day after breaking his collarbone at Catalunya, Cal will surely want to make the next race two weeks after his own injury, the aforementioned operation delay and the fact that his fracture required reassembling four separate pieces of collarbone not withstanding.

Accordingly, he will test the waters on Thursday to see if he feels well enough to compete in Saturday’s GP at Assen. The recent collarbone epidemic’s first victim, Dani Pedrosa, will miss the Dutch TT after a second operation to repair his Le Mans injury. Many fingers will be crossed in the hopes that we can complete a GP weekend without anyone on the sparse GP grid breaking a collarbone, or worse.

Dani Pedrosa underwent yet another shoulder surgery today, this time to fix a loose bone fragment that had become dislodged during the Spaniard’s recuperation from the broken collarbone he suffered from his crash at Le Mans during the French GP. How this complication with his shoulder occurred is a subject of much contention in the MotoGP paddock, as the Spanish press is adamant that Pedrosa re-injured his shoulder in a supermoto crash. HRC however denies this rumor, though the Japanese company has not offered a counter-explanation for Pedrosa’s current situation. The fact remains though that Dani Pedrosa’s healing process has been pushed back further, and Repsol Honda is not sure that Dani will be fit enough to participate in the upcoming Dutch TT.

James Toseland will miss at least the next two World Superbike rounds after crashing during private testing on Friday at Motorland Aragon. The former WSBK champion crashed on Friday in a highside at Turn 10, landing heavily on his head and right wrist. Initially Spanish doctors gave Toseland the go-ahead to race this coming weekend at Donington Park, after examining hi,m and finding only a small fracture in the wrist.

“But when I got back to the hotel, the pain in my right wrist was unbelievable and, considering that I had a race coming up in a week’s time, I sent the scan on to a specialist I know in Manchester,” said Toseland. “They took a new X-ray from a different position in Manchester and found that I had badly displaced bones in my wrist. At that point, things were getting critical as there was no blood flow in the wrist, meaning that the bone could die if I wasn’t operated on immediately.”

TV ratings for the Dutch TT at Assen are in for the Italian TV market (one of the largest markets for MotoGP), and once again they show a decline in MotoGP’s allure without Valentino Rossi. With 2,579,000 viewers, making up 16.79% of the total television audience, MotoGP in Holland attracted only half the audience from last year’s event (5,249,000 viewers, 31.69% of the total television audience). With a similar trend in 125GP and Moto2, some in the Italian press are calling for Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta’s resignation, as these ratings are surely a sign of the sport’s demise.

From the land of windmills, awkward late night television commercials, and mayonnaise covered French fries, comes MotoGP action at Assen. The only MotoGP race to start on Saturday instead of Sunday, Holland played host to its 80th Dutch TT this weekend. Assen saw a few riders making progress on their season, despite only 15 bikes taking to the grid. Check after the jump for race spoilers.

Jorge Lorenzo continues to dominate in a Rossi-less MotoGP, taking his second pole this season while at Assen for the Dutch TT. Also making waves was American Ben Spies, who after taking a third place finish at Silverstone, finds himself fourth on the starting grid tomorrow for the Dutch TT’s Saturday race day start. Lastly, a big shirt-less high five goes to Randy de Puniet for taking his second second-place qualifying in a row. The Frenchman continues to make the Repsol Honda team look bad with his impressive season, and apparently hasn’t gotten the memo that satellite riders are supposed to be slow.