Goodbye Dry Sack, hello Dani Pedrosa Corner. The hairpin at the end of the back straight at Jerez was rechristened on race eve in honour of the recently retired former 125 and 250 champion, three times MotoGP runner up, and thrice Jerez MotoGP winner.
The career-long Honda rider, who was present at Jerez in his new KTM clothes, joins other Spanish stars on the list of Jerez corner names, with curves already named after Sito Pons, Jorge “Aspar” Martinez, Alex Criville, Jorge Lorenzo and Angel Nieto, after whom the whole circuit is also named.
After surgery in the winter, Pedrosa had yet to turn a wheel in his new role as KTM tester. But having retired from MotoGP at the end of last season, he can at least avoid the corner-name curse that struck Lorenzo.
No sooner had the last hairpin been rechristened in his honour in 2013 than Marc Marquez barged him off into the dirt in a controversial battle for second. The race was won by none other than Pedrosa.
But perhaps Pedrosa had already had that moment … last year he played a key role in triggering an extraordinary three-bike crash at Dry Sack, when he and both factory Ducatis went flying.
While nobody can begrudge Pedrosa his honours, not everybody approves of the naming of too many corners without some special reason – one such (as Dovizioso pointed out) being Turn Three at Phillip Island named after Casey Stoner, whose tail-out technique at the fast left-hander was breath-taking.
Rossi, for instance, said: “Sincerely I don’t like. For me other names have more magic than the name of a rider. If they ask me in the future, I will say not.”
By Michael Scott