Pedrosa pessimistic about race chances

Honda has struggled for much of 2010 so far, but Pedrosa was able to earn pole in a hard-fought qualifying session at Jerez today.

Pedrosa was keeping his feet on the ground afterwards though, admitting pole was a shock and that he did not expect to be able to beat Yamaha's Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi on Sunday.

"I really pushed because I wanted to be at the front of the grid, but I didn't expect that pole," said Pedrosa.

"Anyway, I think the Yamahas still have something in their pockets for tomorrow. We are looking for a race rhythm and I think we have to work on it.

"But for the moment we are still having a lot of problems - the bike is shaking all the time. This pole really doesn't matter a lot to me, but this afternoon we managed to do a little improvement and we'll see if we can do a great race."

Andrea Dovizioso was only ninth on the second Honda, but was much more confident about his pace than he had been after struggling on Friday.

"I actually think we could have made it onto the second row today so I'm a little disappointed with the result this afternoon because it can be very important to start from the first two rows," said Dovizioso.

"We showed our full potential in the morning session where we were four tenths behind the fastest rider, so it's a shame we couldn't repeat that in qualifying.

"For the afternoon we made some adjustments to the electronics and machine set-up and this actually took us back a step, so tomorrow we will return to this morning's set-up and I'm confident that will give us an improvement."