REPSOL Honda's outgoing MotoGP rider Dani Pedrosa has announced he will retire from the sport at the end of the 2018, because he is 'not enjoying it as much as before'.
Pedrosa, 32, revealed last month that he had opted not to renew his contract with Repsol, leading to speculation among motorsport fans as to whether he had received an offer from another team or was considering raising the checquered flag on his career.
Leaving MotoGP is a decision which he had been 'pondering on for a long time' and was 'very hard to make', because it is 'the sport he loves' – even though it appears he would have had no problem signing up for another factory team.
“Despite having great opportunities to carry on competing, I feel as though I'm not enjoying the competition with the same intensity as before, and I have other priorities now,” Dani, who has been in MotoGP since 2006, revealed in a press conference in Sachsenring where the German Grand Prix is due to be held this weekend.
He has not elaborated on what these 'priorities' are now, but hinted they are 'less intense' than the world of top-flight motorsport, where he has 'given the best of himself on and off the circuit' – something he wants fans to remember him for.
Dani's eye-watering catalogue of broken bones and other injuries may, he confessed, have 'accelerated the process' of his decision to retire.
“I'd have liked to have had a more robust physique that was able to cope with the knocks better and to have suffered less injuries,” he says – although it is hard to imagine a sportsperson more 'robust', physically and mentally, given that he has never been put off or had to miss a season despite multiple hospital stays as a direct result of falls or crashes on the circuit.
Pedrosa has been world champion three times, although never in MotoGP – he won the world title in 125cc in 2003 and again the next two consecutive years after moving up to 250cc – and has been reserve champion three times in the top rung of the sport, in 2007, 2010 and 2012.
Other than his first year in MotoGP in 2006, he has finished in the top four in the world championship standings every season, winning a total of 31 races out of his 285 Grands Prix and making it to the podium 112 times – the second-highest after Italian veteran Valentino Rossi.
The rider from Sabadell (Barcelona province) holds the record for the most races ridden with Honda Racing in every category, and the most victories with the team, and is the only MotoGP rider to have won at least one race every single year on the trot for 16 seasons.
He has bounced back from serious accidents almost every year since 2003, having suffered a total of 13 broken bones including both ankles in his first world championship year, his right collarbone on three occasions, his left collarbone twice, a wrist, a knee, his left arm, a shoulder joint, a femur, two fingers, two bones in his foot, and a toe.
So far this year, he has broken his right wrist at the Jerez Grand Prix in the province of Cádiz, southern Spain.
And his never having clinched the MotoGP world championship title, Pedrosa is considered to be one of the top riders in global history – in fact, chief executive officer of his first team Dorna, Carmelo Ezpeleta, has given him the title of 'Legend' with a capital 'L'.
Dani thanked his fans and also teams Dorna, Honda and Movístar for having given him the opportunity to compete in motorsport for the last 18 years.
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