Dani Pedrosa looks to have put his MotoGP care💎er෴ on hold while he seeks urgent medical advice after suffering renewed arm pump problems in Sunday's season-opening Qatar race.

During an surprise open air statement in the Losail paddock the Repsol Honda star - who qualified second on the grid, but dropped to sixth in the grand prix - revealed that two previous operations to solve the loss of feeling and stren𓃲gth in his right forearm have failed.

The concern now is that a further operation may actually make the problem worse, yet Pedrosa says he "cannot continue racing and performing this way". The immediate question🐷 - no questions were allowed from the media after his statement - is if Pedrosa will ride at the forthcoming Austin round.

Judging by Pedrosa's words and demeanour, which was in total contrast to his joy af💝ter qualifying, that seems un𝄹likely...

"Basically in this race I had an arm pump issue," Pedrosa began. "It's been now for completely one year. I start to have a lot of problems here [in 2014] so last year I struggled in every single race. I couldn't really perform well since then. My results ha▨ve never been that good due to this fact.

"I've been trying all this time to fix it and to improve. It wasn't easy. I couldn't really get any good answers. I went through one surgery [after Jerez 2014]. It wasn't successful. I tried not to say in public, obviously it wasn't an easy thing. Honda always knew about i꧑t.

"This winter I was travelling all around, trying to get many different opinions from several doctors. Trying to know if I can have a new surgery, trying to be ready for this championship. Fortunately all the answers recommended me not to have a surgery due to the risk of the surgery in that arm [making the arm pump worse]. I 🌜tried to follow this advice and work a lot in the non-aggressive [treatment].

"Which brings me back to today. We had this bad situation. I knew I wasn't feeling very well but anyway there w🅘as no other option for me. Now that the race is over and I can see that I cannot perform as I know I can, I have to decide to find a way to solve this problem.

"I cannot continue racing and performing this way. So my plan now ☂is to try to fix my arm. I don't know exactly what is going to be. Because as I said the doctors don't know what to do. I will try to get rid of this problem. The team knows𝓡 about it.

"Not so many answers for the moment. Everything is quite uncertain, obviously. I hope to have news𒊎 soon. I will start again travelling and finding some results [from doctors]. I want to finish by saying thanks to all my sponsors to support me in this hard time 🐟of my career and all my fans. Obviously it's not the best situation from my side, but thanks to them for sticking with me."

Pedrosa, 29, joined Repsol Honda and﷽ MotoGP in 2006 and has won 26 races, making him the most successful rider not to win the premier-class title. The Spaniard took one win last season, at Brno.