Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa has confirmed he will return to the MotoGP paddock for this weekend's round at Mugello and hopes he is in good enough shape to deal with the Italian track's complexities.

Pedrosa has been out of the picture since his controversial coming together with Marco Simoncelli at Le Mans. He underwent surgery on the injury and then had another smaller operation amid rumours he has aggravated the collarbone break in either a supermoto crash or by going ten-pin bowling...

I"'m going to Italy eager to ride the bike, to see how I feel on the bike and to try and be competitive. Besides my bike, I have really looked forward to seeing the whole team, working with them and trying to do a really good job. At the end of the day we are like a family. You really start to miss them when you are out of racing for such a long time," said the Spaniard.

"In terms of recovery, the truth is that things have improved dramatically since I was operated on. We seem to have found the issue and the positive feeling that I had in the days after being operated on have been confirmed during this last week. Now I need to see how I feel on the bike during a race. Mugello is not an easy circuit. It's physically very demanding, so for us it will be more complicated, for sure."