MotoGP: How Small is Dani Pedrosa?

With the MotoGP season starting the week after next, everybody is asking the same question: just how tiny is Dani Pedrosa?

Well, I've done a few quick calculations comparing Pedrosa to some normal, everyday objects to give the viewer at home an idea of the teeny Spaniard's size. These sums assume that Pedrosa is 1.58 metres tall (5'2") and weighs 51kg (112 lb or 8 stone). Measurements are expressed in the units of the Dani (height) and the Pedrosa (weight).

Firstly, a comparison to everybody's favourite escaped mental patient, World Superbike racer Ruben Xaus. The Chaotic Catalan measures 1.16 Danis in height, and weighs a hefty 1.45 Pedrosas.

The little Spanish superstar fares no better in comparison to the type of animals you are likely to encounter in your living room while watching MotoGP. The typical male African Elephant stands at 2.5 Danis in height, weighing a ground-shaking 147 Pedrosas. It would be tempting to construct an elephant out of Dani Pedrosas, if we could just find another 146 of him. (These may exist in an HRC genetics lab halfway up Mount Fuji.)

A decent sized giraffe stands as high as 3.48 Danis and weighs just 25.5 Pedrosas, so it would be much easier to make a giraffe than an elephant out of the little motorcyclist, though this would still exceed the world supply of 1 Dani Pedrosa.

Moving on to the plant world, a Giant Redwood tree reaches an incredible 53.8 Danis into the sky, and tips the scales at a staggering 41,000 Pedrosas.

Speaking of the sky, a Boeing 747-400 stands on the runway at 19.4 Danis in height, and has a maximum take-off weight of over 7,700 Pedrosas. Needless to say, a jumbo jet won't be too stressed taking the actual Dani Pedrosa to his long-haul destinations.

Finally, King Kong's favourite hangout: the Empire State building, which stretches 443 Danis into the heavens and weighs more than 7 million Pedrosas. It is likely that Dani's small size relative to the Empire State building will protect him from being climbed by giant apes when he visits the United States this year.

Hopefully this technical guide should be of some help when you are watching this year's MotoGP series.