‘Never champ but we’ll still miss Dani’
Is the retirement of Dani Pedrosa the right time to talk about a clearing out the dead-wood on the MotoGP grid? Maybe. But in the circumstances it seems a little unkind. Although onetime tiddler-meister Dani has never quite managed the championship, in spite of 13 years of access to the best bikes Honda has been able to tailor-make for him, he set a remarkable record.
Rossi hasn’t managed to win at least one race every year. Lorenzo neither. Dani has won 31 in all, an average of more than two-and-a-half a year at the end of 2017. Add in his 23 125 and 250 wins since 2002, and the annual average rises to much better than three.
Always fast, in all classes his safe style earned the respect of not only a legion of fans, but also his rivals. All while being (let’s face it) basically too small for the job. Sadly, however, a number of those rivals spent too much of their time knocking Dani down. And being small and flimsy, he would too often get hurt. His best chance of the championship, in 2012, was wrecked when he was knocked down at Misano by Hector Barbera. By year’s end, he trailed champion Lorenzo by just 18 points. Even second at Misano would have earned him that ever-elusive title.
Dani announced his retirement in Germany, at a conference widely described with knee-jerk predictability as ‘emotional’. In fact he kept his emotions outwardly in check but for one brief tearful moment. A big difference from the usual floods of tears at these occasions.
This matter-of-fact way of dealing with the often over-excitable paddock is one of the things racing will miss most about Dani. Like his illustrious Honda predecessor Mick Doohan (who once silenced some ignorant journalistic waffling about the niceties of tyre compounds with the words: “It’s only a motorbike race.”), Pedrosa could keep his head while all about were losing theirs.
‘His style earned the respect of fans and rivals’