For the folks wondering about Dani Pedrosa’s future with the Repsol Honda MotoGP team, the question has been settled. He’s around for another two years, after signing a new contract.
Of course, fans of Pedrosa’s will be delighted to hear he’s sticking around through 2016. He’s proved over and over again he’s got the stuff to win races, but he is in danger of going down in history as a perennial #2 man. When opportunity presented itself, he wasn’t able to surpass the point totals of Casey Stoner or Jorge Lorenzo in their heydays. Now that Marc Marquez has been thrown into the mix and Valentino Rossi’s had an amazing resurgence, it’s going to be even tougher for Pedrosa to win a championship.
But with #93 tearing things up in MotoGP right now, Honda doesn’t need a second champ. They need a consistent rider who can make podiums, and that’s what Pedrosa has been doing – hence the contract. Right now, he’s sitting on 128 points, good for third after taking MotoGP’s tiebreaking rules into consideration (Rossi’s also at 128 points, but he’s officially in second).
