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Dani Pedrosa maintained his excellent preseason form with a hugely impressive performance on his return to his homeland last week.

The young Spaniard was the second quickest rider during the run-out at Jerez, setting a fastest lap time of just over one minute, 38 and a half seconds, which was only marginally slower than the new course record set by Valentino Rossi during that same session.

Pedrosa seemed genuinely surprised by the quality of his own performance and also declared his satisfaction with the test as a whole, which he claimed had provided his colleagues at Honda with some valuable data on his new bike.

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He said afterwards: "It was a good competition with Valentino today but I was not focused on his times, I just wanted to put these tyres on the limit and concentrate on myself, which is what I did.

"It's been a valuable three days, we have made progress with the set-up of the bike for the race and also qualifying, so I'm hoping we're ready for the first round at Qatar."

Spain has proved a happy hunting ground for Pedrosa in recent times: he won in his last 250cc race on home soil in 2005 and recorded a podium finish there on his MotoGP debut last season.

Having finished fifth overall in 2006, the 21-year-old has been tipped to do even better this time around, with both Rossi and Nicky Hayden expressing the opinion to Motor Cycle News that his slight build makes him ideally suited to the new 800cc format.

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