Dani Pedrosa will return to MotoGP action once again in September with a wildcard appearance for KTM at the San Marino Grand Prix in Misano.
KTM’s choice of Misano for Pedrosa’s second wildcard outing of the season is, in one way, strange, when they could have chosen their home race at the Red Bull Ring instead. However, considering Pedrosa’s role as test rider for the KTM RC16 project, Misano makes more sense, as the second and final official in-season MotoGP test follows, on Monday, Sunday’s Grand Prix.
The San Marinese wildcard for Pedrosa will be his second competitive outing of 2023, making this year his most active since his final season as a full-time MotoGP racer in 2018.
Since then, Pedrosa has competed in two wildcard races for KTM, for whom he signed as test rider following his retirement from full-time racing. The first came in the 2021 Styrian Grand Prix, in which he finished 10th, and the second at Jerez earlier this year, where he finished seventh.
San Marino 2016
Seven years ago, Misano was the site of one of Pedrosa’s most impressive race wins. In the 2016 edition, front tyre consumption was one of the key factors. That saw Pedrosa's Repsol Honda teammate Marc Marquez, and the factory Yamahas of Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi, choose the medium-compound front tyre.
Pedrosa, though, was able to make the soft-compound front tyre work, and that allowed him to come through from eighth on the grid to win by over two seconds.
