Dani Pedrosa expected Honda MotoGP exit since 2016

Pedrosa has raced Honda bikes during his entire grand prix racing career, and has been a factory MotoGP rider for the Japanese brand since 2006.

He came close to becoming Jorge Lorenzo's replacement at Yamaha in 2017 but eventually stayed put.

After a poor start to 2018 that has been hampered by injuries, Honda announced earlier this month that it will replace Pedrosa with Lorenzo.

Pedrosa said that it was also his wish to leave Honda, something he already "more or less" decided in 2016.

"Well of course two years ago is a long time ago, but it started like two years ago," he said.

"They knew already two years ago with the previous people in the team, they knew that it was already [likely to happen].

"I said to them more or less this would happen, so at the end it is a mutual thing.

"You need to look for new things and I think it is a good moment to start looking at what you can do next.

"It is quite simple, it is not so complicated."

Pedrosa's future has yet to be finalised, although he appears well-placed to join the planned Petronas-backed Yamaha satellite team after confounding expectations he would announce his retirement during the last MotoGP weekend at Barcelona.

His current team-mate Marc Marquez expects 32-year-old Pedrosa to keep racing.

"What I feel is that he will continue," said Marquez when asked for his thoughts on what Pedrosa would do next.

"To continue MotoGP with a good project he has only one option and everybody knows which is this option.

"But it's what I feel, I don't know."