Dani Pedrosa's Catalan test has ended with the Repsol Honda rider being taken to hospital after Sunday's race winner suffered a heavy highside on the exit of turn one.
Both Pedrosa and Repsol Honda team-mate
Nicky Hayden had planned to spend the day doing back-to-back tests with the standard spring-valve RCV engine and the new pneumatic-valve design.
Pedrosa started with the conventional engine, setting a best lap time of 1min 43.552secs, then switched to the pneumatic-valve unit. But that run - which produced a best lap time of 1min 43.81secs - was cut short by a minor electrical problem, so the Spaniard swapped machines again.
It was during this outing, on the standard engine, that Pedrosa suffered a highside accident, landing heavily on his back.
The double 2008 race winner was taken to Barcelona's Dexeus hospital where x-rays fortunately confirmed that he has no broken bones, but he has bruised his back and will need 48 hours of rest and anti-inflammatory medication.
"The crash happened while I was changing direction in the first chicane. It was a highside and I fell quite heavily. My back and my shoulders hurt," said Dani. "I crashed at the start of my second lap of that run, maybe because the tyres weren't fully up to temperature. When I fell I was doing some tyre testing with the standard engine. I only did ten laps with the pneumatic-valve engine so it's still too early to give any comments."
Due to his injuries, Pedrosa will not test on Tuesday, robbing the 2007
MotoGP World Championship runner-up of the chance to evaluate the pneumatic-valve engine in detail.
Honda originally intended to race the pneumatic-valve engine from the start of this season, but problems with both power delivery and top speed during winter testing saw it sent back to Japan for further development in early February.
