The situation in the past hasn't been quite the same however, as Pedrosa was constantly advantaged in terms of bike development ahead of former teammate Nicky Hayden between 2006 and 2008. As his height was considerable shorter than Hayden's, it caused the North American rider to score inconsistent results throughout the 2007 and 2008 seasons.
The Honda officials insisted that won't be the case next year, as both riders have the power to sustain a title fight next season.
“Dovizioso and Pedrosa will have the same position inside the team. We work together with the two riders, both of them, because that's in everyone's interest. It's not true that we have worked just for Pedrosa up to now. We have two riders and we use the work and the information from both of them. Andrea, too, is very useful for development work, and he will be more and more so,” said HRC vice-president Shuhei Nakamoto in an interview with Motosprint.
To emphasize this change in strategy, Nakamoto also confirmed that Dani Pedrosa's long-time manager Alberto Puig will no longer be in charge of the technical developments of the Honda bikes, but be handed a more organizational role within the Spanish team.
Both Pedrosa and Dovizioso have signed one-year extensions to their current contracts with HRC, but the Italian's contract has a clause that can keep him at Honda until the end of 2011.
HRC's change in strategy seems to be related to Pedrosa's public attack at his team in recent weeks. Although he signed the extension after the San Marino GP two weekends ago, he admitted he would have liked to race for Yamaha next year.
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