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.
The move is no surprise in the paddock, and as planned HRC test rider Kousuke Akiyoshi will substitute for Aoyama in the satellite squad. As for logistics, Aoyama will use Pedrosa’s engine allotment, while Akiyoshi will use Aoyama’s, with the real affect of this shuffle being that Pedrosa can’t come back into the Championship with a cache of unused motors…should he actually return.
As for Pedrosa’s re-injury, a great deal of conjecture in the Spanish press is that the Repsol Honda rider hurt himself while practicing some supermoto. HRC denies this rumor of course, but it is said that Dani Pedrosa was so distraught over injurying himself again, he wanted to call the season off, perhaps taking a page out of teammate Casey Stoner’s book. Pedrosa wrote on his blog yesterday that he hoped to be back by Mugello — we’d sure like to be a fly on the wall during that press conference.
Source: HRC; Photo: © 2011 Jensen Beeler / Asphalt & Rubber – Creative Commons – Attribution 3.0
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