Dani Pedrosa is once again a wildcard for Red Bull KTM at the MotoGP Spanish Grand Prix – just like last year. It’s something that has been rare since he became a test rider for the Mattighofen manufacturer in 2019.
The Spaniard admitted that he didn’t expect to compete again in Jerez in 2024: ‘I didn’t expect, honestly, to do this again after last year. But things got a bit interesting in the tests, so that’s why we decided to do it again‘.
As for why he chose the Spanish Grand Prix for a wildcard, Pedrosa explained that there are solutions to test for which a competitive environment, more stressful like that of a Grand Prix, is necessary:
– Well, speed is difficult to evaluate when you ride alone in the tests. We have some items to try out and they are items that may be important to try out in a more stressful way, so we can see what can come out of it and if we can handle it well. Because usually in tests you have the whole day to fine-tune things, to modify the bike and so on. With this new format, it is also much more stressful as we saw last year. So, this is one of the reasons.
Questioned about what he tested in Jerez that could give KTM what it needs to be in the fight for the top, the “Little Samurai” said: ‘It’s hard to say from this perspective, because as I said before, when you’re alone things are a bit different. So, that’s why we want to measure the feeling a bit this weekend and see how the bike is performing, because this year we can clearly say that in the first three rounds the lap times and race pace are much faster than last year. We also have to evaluate and adapt to that this year, because suddenly everyone is almost half a second – or more – faster than last year. Records are being broken basically everywhere even if the track conditions are not quite perfect like in Portugal – but the lap times were there and the total race time was much faster. Yes, we have some things we would like to try, but we have to put that into the equation to see if it’s working‘.
