Pedrosa delayed by traffic

The 24-year-old Spaniard put his Honda third on the grid for the Sepang race, but believes that he could have been even higher up had he not been held up.

"We did well in the middle session," said Pedrosa. "But at the end I was not able to be very fast.

"On one of the last laps I had some traffic, but I also made some mistakes. That left me with one lap left, and I had the same thing. Also the dashboard was not working. At least it's the front row though."

Pedrosa thinks that his team needs to find more mid-corner grip overnight in order to challenge the Yamahas of Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo in the race.

"The key point here is going to be consistency," he added. "It will be a very tough race and we will look this afternoon for a little bit more corner speed and a bit more braking.

"We will see [how it works] tomorrow. At the moment though, the bike is good and the tyres are lasting well though in the heat."