Pedrosa's focus on win, not points fight

Dani Pedrosa says his focus is on ending 2009 with a home victory at Valencia and the battle for third in the championship is not a priority for him

The Spaniard arrives in Spain in fourth place, 11 points behind Casey Stoner, and has not finished outside the top three in the MotoGP standings since his rookie year.

But he said the points meant little to him and he was more determined to take a second victory of 2009.

"I really want to win this race," Pedrosa insisted, "it's more important to me than finishing third in the championship - so we need to work really hard to give us a good chance on Sunday."

Pedrosa was third in today's practice session, and admitted that Honda had work to do to match pace-setter Stoner's Ducati and Jorge Lorenzo's Yamaha.

"There's a gap to the riders in front and we need to make some improvements for tomorrow so that we've got the best chance of qualifying well," said Pedrosa.

He was still relatively satisfied with Honda's progress in practice.

"For a first practice session, this was okay today and we completed some valuable laps to familiarise ourselves with this circuit again," he said.

"It was really windy out there and this affected the machine more in some corners than others - like in the third sector where it was quite difficult to control the bike. Still, we have time to solve this tomorrow. Also, it's good that we got used to the windy conditions because it looks like we'll have them for the whole weekend."