Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa is suffering with serious rear grip problems at the Jerez MotoGP round and seems at a loss for answers as he struggled to stay inside the top ten while team-mate Marc Marquez vied with Jorge Lorenzo for top spot.

Pedrosa is the business end of 1.1s slower than Marquez while Cal Crutchlow, on the satellite LCR RC213V, is a little further behind but seems to have come up with some solutions with 2015 settings.

“Not a good day. I have different reasons but one of the big reasons is the grip on the rear, I can’t get any good drive out of the turns, so struggling with this,” said Pedrosa, speaking at Jerez.

“Also I lose in some other points of the track. I cannot exit well so the story is this bike is so very powerful, so if yo keep the power on, the better laptime you get, so as I cann’t hammer, I am losing time on the straights in acceleration, let’s say, which was one of my strong points.

“Obviously giving time for free is what makes these gaps. Today, I wasn’t improving in the second practice. I need to find a way to gain some more traction.”

Pedrosa suffered the same problems in Austin where he was out-accelerated by Scott Redding, who weighs 20 kilos more than the tiny Spaniard.