Dani Pedrosa injures himself after a heavy crash

Dani Pedrosa will be back at the Clinica Mobile tomorrow morning to see how the injuries have evolved during the night. © Repsol Media Service. Bad start of the Malaysian Grand Prix for the interests of the Repsol Honda Team, leader of the overall teams' and riders' standings in the 2006 World Championship. While the solid leader of the standings, Nicky Hayden had to settle for a back eleventh place after this first practice day, things went even worse for his team mate Dani Pedrosa, who had a heavy crash 28 minutes before the end of the second free session, while he was leading the time sheets with an advantage of almost one second. The crash caused him a strong blow, injuring his right knee and a toe of his left foot. It happened on turn 13 of the Sepang layout and the Repsol rider was riding at 192 Km/h when he crashed. The front tyre of Dani's bike lost grip on that fast right-hander and the rider, who was leaning his knee on the ground, had the bad luck of hitting with the knee against the inner kerb, causing him a spectacular cut.

According to the statement of Doctor Claudio Macchiagodena, Medical Director of the Championship, who examined Pedrosa after the crash: “Dani has an incision with loss of substance in his right knee that fortunately has not affected the joint. He has got four stitches to reduce the wound but since it is in such a delicate place due to the continuous movement of the area and the flexed position of the leg on the bike, it is not sure whether he will be able to take part in tomorrow's practice and the race on Sunday. Moreover, Dani has a tiny little fissure in his left big toe. If we would be talking of a normal person I would completely rule out the chance of taking part in the activities of the rest of the weekend, but since we're talking about a rider, we have to wait for the evolution of the injury along the next 24 hours to make a further statement.” Repsol Honda Team rider Dani Pedrosa will be back at the Clinica Mobile tomorrow morning to see how the injuries have evolved during the night.

Dani Pedrosa: “Today things were going pretty well. I had a good feeling from the bike and felt comfortable with the pace I was running. But then I had a crash in Turn 13 and landed heavily. It started with a small slide from the front tyre and the bike dropped a little which made my right knee hit the kerb. I'm pretty sure it's this impact that caused my injury. I can remember the whole crash, which is a good I suppose, and I was able to walk away, although it was quite painful. We'll see how it feels tomorrow and decide if I can take part in the morning session – I really hope so.”

Nicky Hayden: “It wasn't as positive as we'd have liked it to be today. If we were just a few tenths faster we'd be a lot further up because it's close just ahead of me – although a few guys up front are really fast so we've definitely got some work to do. We were using the new chassis that we tested on the two days after the Brno race. It worked really well there but hasn't helped us so much here. Also the clutch issue has come back a little bit today. Tomorrow we've got two more hours of practice to come – so we'll definitely try to find a good race tyre and get the bike working a little better.”
(Repsol Media Service)

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