Daniel Pedrosa was born on 29 September 1985 in Sabadell, Spain. He got his first motorcycle (an Italjet 50 with side wheels) when he was four and his first pocket bike at age six. By the time he was nine, he entered the Spanish Minibike Championship and finished his first season in second position.
At sixteen, Dani made his debut in the 125cc class of the World Championship where he scored two podium finishes in the first season and won his first race in 2002. He went on to win the championship in 2003 but his season ended when he broke both his ankles during a crash at Australia’s Philip Island during practice.

Pedrosa duly moved up to the 250cc Grand prix class in 2004 and captured everyone’s attention by winning the first race in South Africa, having entered the championship mostly unprepared, because he was still recovering from his accident! There was no stopping him now and he went on to clinch both the Rookie of the Year title and the Championship title with seven wins and thirteen podiums. He stayed on in 250cc for one more year and promptly won the championship again, despite a shoulder injury.Daniel joined the big boys in 2006 when he started to race 990cc MotoGP bikes. His tenure with Repsol Honda started on a Honda RC211V with team mate Nicky Hayden. Pedrosa is a diminutive man at 1.58m (5”2) and hardly 50kg and his critics immediately expressed doubts that he would be able to manhandle the heavy MotoGP bike.

He made them eat their words when he finished second in the opening round at Jerez and won his first MotoGP race on only his fourth appearance. He rode into the record books by becoming the joint 2nd youngest winner ever, tied with the late Norick Abe and behind Freddie Spencer.

At his second MotoGP victory (at Donington Park) he shared the podium with Valentino Rossi, who was second.However, Daniel’s 2006 season was fraught with misfortunes; first, a knee injury during Free Practice and then an error of judgement that saw him crash out at Estoril, taking Nicky, his team mate, with him. Nicky managed to claw himself back into contention and ended up winning the Moto GP Championship that year.

Pedrosa was 2nd until the Malaysian Grand Prix, but slid back to finish the season 5th overall. However, this was still good enough to clinch Rookie of the Year in his debut season in MotoGP.
Dani continued to race Honda’s new 800cc RC212V during 2007 and although the bike proved unreliable, he still finished the season in second place behind Casey Stoner and ahead of Valentino Rossi. Honda had not managed to fix all the problems by 2008 but, despite an injury, Pedrosa still secured a podium at the first round. He crashed again, but he finished the season in third place. In 2009, Rossi won the MotoGP Championship and Pedrosa was second. His season ended on a high note with a win in front of his home crowd.
Dani resides in London and he loves bicycling and supermotards. He learned the circuits on which he now by heart watching videotaped 500cc races.

His all-time favourite rider is Mick Doohan.