Dani Pedrosa Fractures Collarbone, Out for Flyaways

Dani Pedrosa has suffered more bad luck at Motegi. For the second time in his career, he has crashed there and broken a collarbone.

The Repsol Honda rider suffered a huge highside at the end of the afternoon FP2 session, being flung high into the air at Turn 11. The Spaniard immediate got up holding his collarbone, and was taken on the back of a scooter to the medical center. There, he was diagnosed with a fractured right collarbone.

Pedrosa is to fly back immediately to Spain, where he will undergo surgery to fix the collarbone. Officially, the Repsol Honda team have only ruled him out of Sunday's race at Motegi. However, it is extremely unlikely that the Spaniard will return before Valencia. Dr Xavier Mir, one of the official doctors for MotoGP, told Spanish reporters he did not expect to see Pedrosa back until the final race of the season.

The Repsol Honda team will not need to find a replacement for this weekend's race at Motegi, though as it is at Honda's home circuit, one of HRC's two test riders could step in. The most likely candidate to take Pedrosa's place would be Hiroshi Aoyama, who replaced Pedrosa in Austin, Argentina, and Jerez while the Spaniard was recovering from surgery to fix an arm pump problem. If Pedrosa misses both Phillip Island and Sepang, then Honda will be forced to use a replacement.