'Why not?' - Pedrosa on Suzuka 8 Hours

Available now his MotoGP career is coming to an end, 54-time grand prix winner Dani Pedrosa would be just the kind of rider Honda needs to help break Yamaha's dominance of the Suzuka 8 Hours.

Yamaha won Japan's most famous endurance race for the fourth successive time on Sunday, when Honda's top team of Takumi Takahashi, Takaaki Nakagami and PJ Jacobsen finished runner-up by 30-seconds.

During winter testing, Pedrosa told Crash.net he would "love to race the 8 Hour one day," even joking he could race alongside manager Sete Gibernau, but said it was too great a risk to enter the event while still competing in MotoGP.

But following his recently announced retirement plans at the end of this season, how would the Repsol Honda rider feel about taking part in the 2019 Suzuka round?

"At this moment I didn't really think about it but... Why not?" replied Pedrosa, speaking at Brno on Thursday afternoon.

LCR rookie Nakagami was the only current MotoGP rider competing in this year's Suzuka race, with rivals Pol Espargaro (twice), Bradley Smith (once) and Valentino Rossi (once) also former winners of the 8 Hours.

Pedrosa added that he has not yet decided on any plans for 2019, including the possibility of becoming a Honda test rider: "Not yet… I have time to think!"

Something Pedrosa has already been considering is the response to his retirement announcement.

"There have been some very nice words. [I had] a lot of emotions and good feelings about their thoughts. Obviously, many times you think about yourself, but maybe it's a different picture to what other people think of you. So it was nice to be seen in that way."

A MotoGP rider with Repsol Honda since 2006, Pedrosa also commented on how the pressures of competing in the championship have grown slowly over the years.

"If you jump back some years and compare then say yes it's different," he said.

"Obviously when things change slowly, then you don't realise very much. But it's true the time to rest and recover and do your own thing at home before the races is less.

"Also about fans, media there is much more coverage and talking - many more comments, people saying this and that - and that creates more stress!"

Pedrosa, a winner in every previous MotoGP season, arrives in Brno with a best finish of fifth.

"I would say 'feet on the ground' because Germany should have been good for us, but it wasn't," he said. "Here we did a test but obviously we have to see when the others are on track also and go practice-by-practice because sometimes it's been difficult to know until the last moment what tyre you are going to race.

"It's important not to have a lot of expectations at this moment, just go out and find how is the feeling on the track with the tyres and then if the feeling is coming good then we can consider more things. But at this moment we will start with the set-up from the test."