The most intimate interview with Dani Pedrosa

“Some of the fears you live with while you are competing or on the bike are the secrets you don’t confess to others and keep deep inside.” Dani Pedrosa sits down for an impossible, very intimate and personal interview, in which he answers himself about all kinds of questions regarding his personal vision of the experience lived as a MotoGP rider.

“How do you live the fear you go through?, what do you do when you feel fear?, how do you express it? and above all, how do you overcome it?” are some of the questions Dani would have liked to answer but that were never asked during his career. Questions whose answers, he believes, would help younger riders overcome difficult moments in their sporting careers on a motorcycle. “Experience and age allow you to improve in situations where you are not so good and give you weapons you didn’t have before.”

A career in which the evolution of both the championship and the motorcycles and their technology has clearly marked a before and after: “The sport has changed a lot. Before, it was easier to see a rider’s potential. Now, with four-stroke engines, it is harder to identify which riders are really good, and to tell them apart from those who are not,” says Dani.

The Spanish rider misses “the naivety of the early days. I miss it.” Those moments when you didn’t think so much about the things that happened and why they happened.” And for Dani, “every moment is unique, it doesn’t repeat itself.” That is why, because no two moments are the same, “you have to squeeze every moment to the maximum and enjoy it.”

Among the anecdotes of his career, Dani tells a very personal one that he lived firsthand: “My grey hairs appeared in the hospital. When I went into the operating room for one of the many operations I have undergone, I didn’t have any; and when I came out, I did. It was very surprising.”

For Dani, “Life in MotoGP is an incredible platform for getting to know yourself. You live alongside the fans, the leaders with people from other countries. The way you live all of this defines your personality and your behaviour.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OOYDQRkFps

Looking ahead, Dani still doesn’t know for certain what he will do. “I have some ideas, but for now they are only projects.” What he does have clear is that he will make the most of the extra time available “to do things I couldn’t do while I was competing. I have some places marked that I want to visit, spots where I can surf, like Hawaii.” And Dani wants time to pursue some of his favourite hobbies, “Cycling and Surfing.”