Dani Pedrosa will have a new engine and chassis available to him this weekend as Repsol Honda try desperately to catch up Jorge Lorenzo and Yamaha. Pedrosa will be riding what is effectively the 2013-spec RC213V and is praying they will give him the platform to challenge Lorenzo more than he did in Italy.
“I’m really looking forward to racing in Laguna Seca. The atmosphere there is fantastic and it’s a very particular track, nothing like what we are used to in Europe. Laguna is very small, bumpy and technical. Last year it was a very hard race for me due to the lack of fitness, so I hope to enjoy riding there again as we did in the past. Honda has made a big effort to bring the new parts to Laguna so we’ll have our standard bike but we’ll also get the new engine and chassis we tested in Mugello and I hope we can take advantage of these improvements and have another good race”.
Teammate Casey Stoner will be running the new engine but it will be installed in the standard chassis, an option he feels more comfortable with.
“I always look forward to going to Laguna, it’s a circuit we’ve enjoyed quite good results at and the atmosphere there is fantastic. The circuit is a very tight and technical and it’s definitely a positive that it goes around to the left, as we have less chatter on the left hand side. However, some of the most critical corners are right handers so it depends how we can get the bike set up before I can say if we’ll be competitive. We’ve had a nice short break since Mugello and we’re looking to improve on our results from the last two races. HRC have worked hard in Japan to provide us with the new engine and some parts from the test, hopefully we can have three dry sessions to get some work done and be competitive for Sunday, but we’ll have to wait until we get on track”.
