In our article last week about the new crop of rookies entering MotoGP for 2006, we talked about new Repsol Honda rider Dani Pedrosa. Pedrosa, a 3-time world champ (one 125cc and two 250cc titles), is widely regarded by the European press as being the likely successor to Valentino Rossi. While it might be a little bit early to reach that conclusion, Pedrosa continues to put out promising results in testing.
In a hot and humid first day of testing at the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia, Pedrosa pushed his Honda RC211V (newly modified to better suit his 5’2″ frame) to achieve the fourth-quickest time of the day. While his 2’03.75 is a fair bit off the day’s quickest (a 2’02.95 posted by Fortuna Honda’s Marco Melandri), it is comfortably close to the times of Nicky Hayden (2’03.20) and Carlos Checa (2’03.58), while being quicker than veterans like Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi.
The other two names we mentioned in last week’s article – Casey Stoner and Chris Vermeulen – were outshined by Pedrosa in today’s testing. Casey Stoner’s day was hindered when he lost the front end and lowsided the RC211V, and his best effort of the day was a 2’04.29. Vermeulen, meanwhile, was still aboard the 2005-model Suzuki while his teammate John Hopkins tested the 2006 bike. Vermeulen’s quickest time was a 2’05.56.
As we said last week, fast times in testing do not a season make, but Pedrosa has definitely come into the mix in a more competitive way than would be expected of a typical rookie.
