Valencia MotoGP: Dani Pedrosa encouraged by Honda effort

Spaniard Dani Pedrosa reckons he’s been encouraged by the effort Honda is putting into its 2010 MotoGP world championship challenge.

But the triple world champion says he will reserve judgement on Honda’s 2010 title prospects until he’s tested a prototype RC212V in Valencia next week.

Honda has adopted an aggressive recruitment strategy at the end of 2009, poaching several key technical staff from rivals Yamaha.   

The capture of Christian Battagglia and Andrea Zugna is seen as a massive coup for Honda, which is desperate to try and turn its factory RC212V into a winner for the first time in the 800cc era.

Based at Yamaha’s Milan headquarters, both have played a key role in making Yamaha the dominant force in MotoGP, and move to Honda with intimate knowledge of the YZR-M1 project.

And Pedrosa said: “We really want to improve our results and go better than we have in the past. Everybody is playing a big part and I really appreciate it, but of course more than staff, I’d like to improve the technical part.”

Pedrosa said he was excited about making his debut on the 2010 factory RC212V at next week’s test and added: “This is a really, really important test for us. It is the first time we can test next year’s bike and we need to check its performance.”

The new bike is expected to feature a V4 engine similar to the 2009 model, but the new bike will feature a heavily-revised chassis and swingarm package.