Dani Pedrosa battles flu and Casey Stoner arm pump to finish second and third in Qatar

Dani Pedrosa completely turned his Qatar weekend after taking second place in tonight’s thrilling MotoGP race.
While we thought he was suffering from some sort of problem following the scandal regarding his boating license, instead the small Spaniard was suffering from the flu and a fever, something that he never mentioned over these long four days.

“I’m very happy with this result because we have been able to turn around all the problems we had during the weekend.

After a good pre season we got here and everything went wrong: I had flu and a fever, I crashed on Friday, then the qualifying practice was a disaster… So, it’s very good to leave here with this podium, even if I feel little bit sad because I thought I could win this race, I had it in my hands for a while.
The team did a fantastic job and we saw things very different after warm up; then I managed a perfect start which was a key moment in the race, and I was able to stay with Casey and Jorge.

In the end, with 4 laps to go I tried to take the lead, but Lorenzo was cleverer than me this time and choose a better strategy.
I passed him but he overtook me immediately and also Casey, then I was behind Casey for 1 lap and lost contact with Jorge.
Anyway, it’s a good start to the season and we will try to do better in Jerez”, said Pedrosa who had some problems riding with a runny nose.
Casey Stoner’s race was conditioned by arm pump problems – that last time, if memory serves us well it was at Assen in 2010 when too tight under leathers also conditioned his race.
Like we said in our previous post, the cause seems due to a pair of too tight gloves and there is no mention of chattering that plagued the reigning World Champion during qualifying, even if his Honda seemed to be pumping in certain areas of the circuit.
“It wasn’t really the way we wanted to finish the race weekend here, after FP3 and Qualifying it was always going to be a tough race for us but in the end it came in the wrong areas.
The bike was working well for us, I definitely had the package and the pace to lead the field which was really positive.
However, I suffered from really bad arm pump.
After three or four laps I felt it but it gradually got worse, I tried to pull a little gap from Jorge and Dani and put in the minimal effort possible to retain the gap and try and win, but as the race continued it got worse and worse and eventually the muscles had nothing more to give.
I couldn’t hold onto the handle bars properly and it made things really difficult so it was a disappointing race for this reason, but for many other technical reasons it was very promising”.