Pedrosa admits race will very hard

The Spaniard revealed this week that he will have an operation later this month to remove a plate inserted when he broke his collarbone at Motegi last year, as a compression is causing numbness in his arm during races.

That caused him to fall off the pace in Qatar a fortnight ago and go from challenging for the lead to struggling to hold on to third. Pedrosa fears tomorrow's Jerez race might be a similar story, but pledged to do whatever he could to maintain his pace.

"For tomorrow, I don't know. We have to wait and see. Maybe we'll have some rain - it's possible," he said.

"I'm just trying to focus on the best result possible. It's going to be hard for me, but I'm going to try to keep on two wheels until the end."

Although Pedrosa was quickest in Friday's second practice session, he said he was not 100 per cent happy with his Honda yet.

"We did some good practice, I think the bike was going not so bad," he said. "It's still not as perfect as I'd like, but we will keep on working."