Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa was left with a 'bitter taste' when he wasn't able to run at Jorge Lorenzo's pace in the Motegi MotoGP race and was left with a cooked rear Bridgestone.

Pedrosa, and team-mate Marc Marquez, both ran the hard rear while Lorenzo found a setup with the soft options that allowed him to pull away at the end of the race - something that Pedrosa and his squad are investigating.

On Sunday, we were able to have a long practice session in the morning, which we took full advantage of with the team. That’s why later in the race it was disappointing to see that while Lorenzo rode in the low 46s, I was able to keep up with him but as soon as he pushed the pace a little, I couldn’t and the bike slid a lot on coming out of the turns," said Pedrosa.

"It was strange because we thought we had got a good setup in the morning but when the race finished, we were surprised to see that the tyre was very worn; a lot more than the tyre on any other bike.

"We want to thoroughly analyse what happened; whether it was a mistake we couldn’t control or if we made a mistake in the setup because it cannot happen again. Personally, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth because being there and not being able to battle for victory is never pleasant."