Spanish motorcycle ace Dani Pedrosa will attempt to ride without painkillers at Assen.

For Repsol Honda rider Dani Pedrosa has had little time to recover from a hip injury ahead of his home round in Barcelona last time out, and suffered discomfort throughout the race weekend which he had felt obliged to attend in order to keep up with the MotoGP series leaders. But this time around the Spaniard has had extra time to recover from his injuries sustained at previous rounds and is aiming to ride at the Alice TT Assen without the help of painkillers.

“Since the race in Barcelona I’ve basically been resting, trying to give my hip as much chance to improve as possible. Obviously there hasn’t been a lot of time - just over one week - but I certainly feel a lot better now than immediately after the last race when I was totally exhausted,” added the Repsol Honda rider.

“I’m feeling positive about the weekend and we’ll just have to see how it goes when riding starts on Thursday. My intention would be to ride without receiving any pain-killing injections because gradually they lose their effectiveness and they are not something I want to rely on - we’ll see how the feeling is when I start to ride.”

Dani Pedrosa has been on medication since a ‘tankslapper’ moment at the Italian round of the World Championship at Mugello, with the required grip and movement, sensitivity on board a MotoGP machine has been lacking due to the nature of the injections which seem to have limited his feel on the motorcycle.

Dani Pedrosa has had good results at the Assen track and is no doubt looking forward to going one better this year.