Cycle News

VOL. 53 ISSUE 38 SEPTEMBER 27, 2016 P129 agree, as at Aragon before the race. "Of course, to win a race is a good feeling." Before the race he is also likely to reveal that he intends to work with his mechanics to find good machine settings, then try his best to get a good result. Some regard this as dull. Not me. I find it refreshing. I mean, ask a bloody obvious question, then get a bloody obvious an- swer and be glad of it. It's not that Dani can't be entertaining. Get him in the right mood and on the right subject (riding technique is a good one) and he can be as analytical and revealing as anybody. It's just that he doesn't feel that it's strictly a necessary part of being a good motorcycle racer. And he's right. Nor is having a sense of humor, but Pedrosa makes good on that one anyway. But only to his friends and in private. Why bother otherwise? It doesn't make you any faster. And faster is what has always mattered. Dani came to GP racing in 2001 under the wing of ex-500 GP winner and injury victim Alberto Puig, along with Toni Elias and Joan Olive. The last-named had achieved the most: champion of the one-make schoolboy series two years earli- er, and then the Spanish Nation- al 125 Championship. Pedrosa had been hand picked not for his results, but for his promise. Puig proved pretty far-sighted, for he has outranked his peers. Puig was an austere head- master to the youngsters, and remained so as Pedrosa's manager until the end of 2013. It might have been a burden, for when the pair split, reportedly amicably, Pedrosa became in- stantly less taciturn. Even smiled in public now and again. Dani may not be keen on polishing up his image, but he has blotted it just the once, in 2012, when he was one of seven people arrested for cheating (by using an ear-piece) during an exam to gain a Spanish yacht- master certificate. And he is on record for mouth- ing off just the once, at Marco Simoncelli, after the hot-headed Italian had knocked him off and broken his collarbone at Le Mans in 2011. It was round four, and Dani was second by just four points to Lorenzo in the championship, after one win and two podiums. The crash wrecked probably his best-ever chance of winning the title, and when he returned after missing the next three races as well, he said of Simoncelli: "He has noth- ing in his head except hair." Later that year of course Simoncelli crashed once too often, and was killed, leaving Dani looking a little peevish. "I learned," he told me afterwards, "that perhaps life is too short to have enemies." By contrast, he came out shin- ing—by his usual means of keep- ing his opinions to himself—in the Rossi-Marquez fandango at Sepang last year. While Lorenzo leapt in to condemn Rossi very publicly even while the stewards were still examining the facts, Pedrosa's measured and guard- ed response left him looking very much like Gentleman Dani. Here's another comment from one of my many interviews with him: "I don't know why, but I like to have something that is only for me. That gives me a lot of strength." Dani has 52 GP wins in all classes, 29 in MotoGP, putting him equal at seventh overall with Phil Read (behind Agostini, Rossi, Nieto, Hailwood, Lorenzo and Doohan). It makes him far and away the most successful rider never to win a MotoGP title. Two more wins and he will be equal with Mick. Nearly man? Doesn't seem fair, really. Just because he's only two bricks and a ticky high. CN

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