For many years, wet weather was Dani Pedrosa’s Achilles’ heel.
But after crashing from the lead of the 2008 German MotoGP at Sachsenring, the Repsol Honda star said ‘enough’ and pledged to do whatever it took to master rain riding.
Pedrosa’s initial plan was to train with a Supermoto bike on a wet karting track.
But, chatting to former rivals Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo during a special Hall of Fame dinner, Pedrosa revealed it ended in disaster.
Then came a much more radical idea.
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“I wasn’t fast in the wet,” Dani Pedrosa tells Rossi in the newly released video on MotoGP.com
“Do you remember at the Sachsenring I’d crashed while leading? I said, ‘Enough… Every year I lose the championship because there is a wet race and I have to go faster than I’m comfortable with’.”
Dani Pedrosa crashes from the lead of a wet 2008 German MotoGP.
© Gold and Goose
Rossi: “How did you train for the wet?”
“I didn’t know how to do it,” Pedrosa admitted.
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“So I took the motard [Supermoto] bike, put wet tyres, and when it was raining, I went to the karting [track].
“The first day at the karting, I crashed on the first lap! Then I tried to heat the tyres a bit, and crashed anyway!
“You know how the karting [track] is – flat, not much rubber. There’s no grip.
“So there we said: ‘Impossible, we can’t do this’. So what did we do? [laughs] When it was raining, with Alberto [Puig, manager and former 500cc racer]…”
“No! On the normal road!”
Rossi can already see where the conversation is heading: “No! On the normal road!”
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Pedrosa continues: “[Puig] called me and said, ‘Today it’s raining all day’. We went to his home and took the [Motard] bikes, the leathers, a plastic coat, some money for fuel, and went on the road.
“Do you know the road to the mountain in Barcelona? We went up and down, up and down… When we ran out of fuel, we’d put some more. The continue, up and down, up and down.”
Lorenzo overhears the conversation: “On the road? No way! Both of you?”
“Yes,” Pedrosa smiles. “Both of us, using the knee [down], up and down the mountain road 100 times, and then refuel. All in one day.
“Then, another time again, when it was raining, and from there I started to learn.”
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“So it worked”, says Rossi. “You became fast in the wet.”
Dani Pedrosa wins a soaking wet 2012 Malaysian MotoGP.
© Gold and Goose
Pedrosa, who had joined MotoGP in 2006, finally claimed his first wet-weather victory in monsoon conditions at Sepang 2012.
A further wet win followed soon after at Valencia, then at Le Mans 2013 and Motegi 2015.
But ultimately, the wet breakthrough didn’t provide the missing piece needed to claim a MotoGP title.
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Pedrosa finished as the world championship runner-up three times, retiring at the end of 2018 with 31 victories, making him the most successful rider without a premier-class crown.
Andrea Dovizioso is the next closest, with 15 MotoGP wins.
Pedrosa and Dovizioso continue to ride MotoGP machinery as test riders for KTM and Yamaha, respectively.
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