Dani Pedrosa has admitted to having suffered from chronic fatigue in the final three seasons of his MotoGP career with Honda.
The 31-time grand prix winner has revealed that he was diagnosed with the same issue that compromised the career of his former team-mate Casey Stoner, who retired from MotoGP after 2012 at the age of just 27.
The Spaniard stated that it took another three years for him to fully recover from the effects of the ailment and return to the track again.
In an interview with Motorsport.com’s Spanish edition, Pedrosa shed new light on his time in MotoGP and how his physical fitness contributed to his decision to hang up his helmet in 2018.
“Like Stoner, I also had chronic fatigue in my last years in MotoGP,” he acknowledged. “The last two or three years of my career I was dealing with it.
“I stretched it out until I realised that I couldn’t get out of there and that I needed to stop racing. It took about three years to get back on track.”
Pedrosa is widely regarded as the greatest rider not to win a championship in the premier class. Hired by Honda in 2006 to spearhead its MotoGP programme, Pedrosa finished runner-up thrice in a glittering career that yielded 112 podiums and 31 poles in addition to his 31 race victories, but came short of winning the ultimate prize.
Dani Pedrosa, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Throughout his 13 seasons in MotoGP as a full-time rider, Pedrosa was plagued by injuries that prevented him from mounting a sustained title challenge. The Spaniard ended up missing a number of races due to crashes, while he also spent a fair amount of time not being fully fit on the bike.
Now a test rider at KTM, Pedrosa again expressed his frustration at the consequences of these injuries on his time in MotoGP.
“We calculated the total time I was out of action due to injuries, and all the races I couldn’t participate in because of it, and we concluded that I would have missed about 17 or 18 Grand Prix, a whole season,’ he said.
“When I retired I had serious problems with my collarbone, it was disintegrated.Part of it was very badly damaged; the bone wouldn’t heal on its own.
“It wouldn’t solidify and couldn’t withstand all the forces I put on it. It was a very long process, and thanks to some stem cell doctors I was able to solve it.”