Aoyama to sub for Pedrosa at Repsol Honda in MotoGP

Team Repsol Honda has announced that Hiroshi Aoyama will step in place of Dani Pedrosa at the Circuit of the Americas and Termas de Rio Hondo rounds of the 2015 MotoGP championship. Earlier this week, Pedrosa successfully underwent a surgery to treat the arm pump in his right forearm, which will result in him missing out on all the MotoGP action for the next four to six weeks.

After scoring the 250cc world championship title in 2009, Aoyama moved to Moto2 racing in 2010. He raced for the Honda World Superbike Team on a Honda CBR1000RR in the 2012 WSBK championship season and also had a small stint in MotoGP, before moving to Repsol Honda as a test rider in 2014. Earlier this year, Aoyama tested the bike at the pre-season testing in Sepang, where he was the 14th fastest rider overall. Incidently, one of his races in MotoGP was back in 2011, when he had stepped in place of Pedrosa at the Assen MotoGP.

While Honda did admit that they had been in touch with MotoGP champion Casey Stoner for a place on the grid, it was later decided that a return to MotoGP was not possible at such a short notice. Pedrosa has been battling with arm pump for over a year now, though this medical condition recently aggravated at the Grand Prix of Qatar. The previous surgery to fix this issue had turned out to be ineffective, though this time around, Honda has confirmed that the surgery performed in Madrid has been successful. We hope to see Pedrosa back on the Honda very soon and wish him a speedy recovery.