Honda and Dani Pedrosa were together for the last 18 years in the World Championship, but at the end of the year, they will part ways. Honda Racing Corporation confirmed that the Spanish rider will leave the Repsol Honda team, while Pedrosa says he will keep Honda in his heart but he now needs to find new challenges.
Yoshishige Nomura, HRC president, says “today is a sad day. In the name of HRC I want to say thank you to Dani for his hard but fruitful work, and express our gratitude for these decades we spent together. We wish him all the best. Thank you Dani!”.
From next season on, Dani Pedrosa will face a completely different scenario, riding for a new team and on a different bike. Since he raced in the 125 cc championship, Pedrosa was always with Honda machines, winning three world titles, 31 victories in MotoGP and being three-times runner-up in MotoGP.
Dani Pedrosa also spoke about this official announcement
“I want to say thank you to HRC for all these years. I grew up as a person and not only as a rider. I will always keep HRC in my memories and in my heart. In life we need new challenges and I feel this is the moment to change. Thank you HRC”.
The future of Dani Pedrosa is still unknown.
While there are some teams interested in having Pedrosa – Suzuki in case the deal with Joan Mir falls through, or even KTM Tech3 -, there are those who believe the 32-year old rider will take the chance to retire from racing.
For his seat on the Repsol Honda team, there are quite a few possibilities: Jonathan Rea coming in from Kawasaki in World Superbike, Andrea Iannone who recently announced his departure from Suzuki, Alex Marquez is another rider that could end up riding a factory RC231V, and even Joan Mir has a new offer from HRC to occupy the now vacant seat on the team, alongside Marc Marquez.
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Interesting developments , eh ?