Aragon MotoGP: Dani Pedrosa not counting on Stoner support

Dani Pedrosa says he won’t be relying on the return of factory Honda teammate Casey Stoner to help him capture a maiden MotoGP world title in 2012.

The Spaniard got his title tilt back on track with a crucial win in yesterday’s Motorland Aragon race.

But with main rival Jorge Lorenzo collecting an easy second, the deficit in the championship chase remains a massive 33-points with just four races remaining.

After his title hopes took a battering with a controversial first lap exit in Misano last month, Pedrosa’s third win in four races did see him recover five points to Lorenzo.

But the factory Yamaha rider hasn’t finished outside of the top two in the 13 races he’s got the chequered flag in. And it seems the only rider who could potentially take vital points of the 2010 world champion is Stoner.

The reigning world champion is still recovering from the serious ankle injury he suffered in a qualifying crash in Indianapolis in mid-August and there is no confirmed date for his return to action.

Pedrosa though said it was unimaginable for him to contemplate asking the Australian to help his challenge when he is fit to return to his factory RC213V.

Pedrosa said: “You win a championship because you are overall better than the others, not because you get any help from anyone. Casey is a winner and I would not ask him for anything like this.

“If it happens because the races finish like this it is good, but it can also happen in the other way. We are teammates and both winners and if he comes back it will because he wants to win the last races of his career.”

Pedrosa said he had tried to put his Misano disaster out of his mind to focus on getting back to winning ways in Spain. But the task had not been easy because of the intrigue into how it all went so horribly wrong in Misano when he was caught up in a fiasco on the start line.

He added: “All the interviews before this race focussed on what happened in Misano and this is not so good to keep looking ahead. This is in the past and I want to leave it there.

“In the race I had good concentration and I followed Jorge for the first few laps and then passed him for the lead. I made a small gap and was able to manage it until the end of the race.

“It is important to manage the tyres here because they suffer a lot on this track and towards the end with the spinning it was hard to keep the lap times.

“It felt strange in some part of the race because I was so focussed I almost forgot it was a race and I was just riding but about four laps from the end I decided to slow down a little bit.”

For detailed coverage of the Motorland Aragon MotoGP weekend, see the October 3 issue of Motor Cycle News