Monday, August 18, 2008

Pedrosa: `Disastrous tyres have made me embarrassed´

Repsol Honda´s Dani Pedrosa lay the blame for his lowly Brno result firmly at the door of tyre supplier Michelin, claiming embarrassment at the performance afforded to him.

Dani Pedrosa in the Repsol Honda garage (MotoGP)

In statements likely to reverberate around the MotoGP paddock for a long time to come, Dani Pedrosa sensationally slammed tyre manufacturer Michelin for their efforts in the Czech Republic.

The French fabricants had brought a wide range of compounds to Brno in order to avoid a repeat of their Laguna Seca whitewash, none were suitable for Pedrosa to push for the top positions. For him, such an error was unforgiveable, and he let rip with a tirade in the immediate aftermath of his fifteenth place finish.

`I would say that this was the most difficult race of my career. I did all that I could from the start, and was close to crashing on three or four occasions. From then on I had to settle for finishing the race,´ said the Spaniard, in need of a good result after two consecutive DNFs.

`I´m embarrassed –I don´t think I´ve ever been so embarrassed- because of the feeling of impotence that I had on the bike… the tyres didn´t work well at any point in the weekend, which has been a disaster.´

So disappointed was the 2007 World Championship runner-up with the events that he also contemplated aloud the possibility of skipping the scheduled two-day Honda test that begins on Monday.

`Things are very clear; I was going very, very slow and despite that I still only had half the tyre at the end. It is even difficult to think about how to prepare a practice schedule for Monday. With these conditions, we won´t prepare anything in the test.´

With this in mind, and just one point from the past three races, the MotoGP title is moving ever-further away from Pedrosa. 76 points separate him and leader Valentino Rossi –a margin that will be hard to recover with just six races remaining.

`It´s bad for the title as well. We obviously knew that it was going to be difficult, but now it´s practically impossible. Above all, the worst thing to come out of this race is the feeling of powerlessness that one feels when putting up with

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