Pedrosa: Honda needs more pace

Pedrosa beat his countryman Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) to second behind Stoner - who has been quickest all weekend - but says Honda needs to find more speed to have a chance in the race.

"The first thing is to go faster, because at this moment Casey is going very well, and so is Jorge," said Pedrosa.

"We want to improve our settings a little bit for tomorrow. We're going to work this afternoon and try some things to improve a little bit, as we still need something else.

"We will look for it, and that's all we can do. We'll just try to do our best tomorrow and I hope we can do a good race."

Pedrosa goes into the finale 11 points behind Stoner in the championship in their battle for third place. His Laguna Seca victory is his only win of the year so far, so if he does not win tomorrow it will be the first season in his MotoGP career when he has not taken two victories.