Pedrosa began racing at age four on an Italjet 50 and entered the 125cc World Championship in 2001. He won his first race in 2002 and claimed the 125cc title in 2003 with five victories, though he suffered a serious ankle fracture during practice at Phillip Island shortly after securing the championship. He moved to the 250cc class in 2004, winning the title in his debut 250cc season with seven victories and taking Rookie of the Year honours; he retained it in 2005 with eight wins despite a shoulder injury in Japan. He holds the record as the youngest-ever 250cc/intermediate-class world champion.
Pedrosa stepped up to MotoGP with Repsol Honda in 2006, winning the Chinese Grand Prix that May — becoming among the youngest premier-class winners — and earning Rookie of the Year honours after finishing fifth in the championship. In 2007 he finished championship runner-up behind Casey Stoner.
In 2010 Pedrosa won four races and again finished runner-up, this time behind Jorge Lorenzo. His 2012 campaign was particularly frustrating: he accumulated 332 championship points — at the time the highest points total ever achieved without winning the title — yet finished second again to Lorenzo.
From 2013, Pedrosa was joined at Repsol Honda by young teammate Marc Márquez. He continued to win races — including victories in Spain, France, and Malaysia in 2013 — while finishing third overall. Injuries accumulated through his career, including a 14th major surgery following a crash at Motegi in 2016 that caused him to miss three races. His 2018 season produced no wins and no podiums, his worst in the class; he finished 11th in the championship.
Pedrosa announced his retirement from regular MotoGP competition at the 2018 German Grand Prix. He signed with Red Bull KTM as a test and development rider in October 2018, contributing to KTM's development programme. A corner at Spain's Circuito de Jerez was renamed Curva Dani Pedrosa in his honour in 2019. He made wildcard MotoGP appearances in 2021, 2023, and 2024, including a tenth-place finish at the 2021 Styrian Grand Prix. From 2022 he also competed in sportscar racing, including the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe series and the 2023 GT2 European Series.
Over 299 Grand Prix starts across all classes, Pedrosa scored 54 wins and 153 podiums. In MotoGP alone: 221 starts, 31 wins, 112 podiums, 31 pole positions, 44 fastest laps, and 3,015 championship points.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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