Valencia MotoGP: Dani Pedrosa ready for victory challenge

Home favourite Dani Pedrosa believes he will be able to mount a strong challenge for a second successive MotoGP victory in tomorrow’s season-ending Valencia clash.

The Repsol Honda rider produced an impressive late burst to clock a best time of 1.31.555 to finish just 0.053s adrift of Casey Stoner, who romped to his ninth pole position of the campaign.

Pedrosa, who has yet to win on Bridgestone tyres since his controversial switch early last month, said: “Finally, it looked like we might get a dry session this afternoon.

The hour started dry but then it started raining again, which spoiled the work we had planned focusing on trying different race tyres. I wanted to continue working with race tyres, preparing for the race, but we made an early switch to qualifying tyres to make sure of a good grid position for tomorrow, in case it started raining more heavily.

“Finally we made the front row, quite close to pole, and the front row is particularly important at this track. We were only able to try one race tyre this afternoon, so we will need a good warm-up and then we will need to think very carefully about which tyres we will run in the race. I hope we can have a dry race tomorrow.”