Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa looked set for his best MotoGP result for some time at Buriram yesterday until a front-end washout left him sitting in the gravel.

But the tiny Spaniard said he was at a huge disadvantage from the start after being ‘forced’ to use the hard rear Michelin into which he struggled to get heat.

“We were forced to use the hard rear and I had a huge, massive, disadvantage on that. Because for me, to warm-up this tyre was almost impossible. It took me five laps [in the race] and I had to do two extra laps before the grid, to clean the tyre and try to give temperature, when all my rivals put the new tyre in on the grid,” he said, speaking at the track.

“Even then they had a lot more grip, so it was a massive disadvantage. Then I had a problem on the clutch and this didn’t allow me to make a good start, so then in the first corner I wasn’t that strong and Miller came in, released the brakes and took us both out.

“This made us lose even more positions later on the straight because we didn’t make a good exit from the first corner. I lost so many seconds, maybe four seconds, in the first couple of laps but then I caught back to them before the crash. So this is the positive part but unfortunately it ended in a crash and I think it would be a lot different if I could start from the front.”