barrygrussell
Senior Member
I cannot compete with the professionals so here is a nice picture from Misano!
MotoGP world champion, Jorge Lorenzo, who had shown the strongest pace through practice and qualifying at Misano, made it count as he took a convincing win in the 28-lap San Marino Grand Prix.
Although it was Casey Stoner who led away from pole position, the reigning world champion got ahead on the first lap and dealt with intense pressure from the Australian until his challenge began to fade after the tenth lap. By lap 20 Pedrosa, who had been running in third place since the start, got within range of Stoner and went through with five laps left and pulled a gap that went to 4.6 seconds at the end.
Most interest in the race was in the intense battle for fourth place between Andrea Dovisioso, Marco Simoncelli and Ben Spies who swapped places and paint for the last eight laps. It was the San Carlo Honda Gresini rider who triumphed, crossing the line 0.037 seconds ahead of Dovisioso, with Ben spies a further 0.7 seconds back. Valentino Rossi, who had made a good start and ran in fifth place until first Simoncelli got through with a hard passing move on lap five, flowed by Dovisioso on lap eight and then Ben Spies on lap 16. The nine times world champion finished in a lonely seventh place ahead of the Rizla Suzuki of Alavaro Bautista, who was seven seconds clear of Hector Barbera who deprived Cal Crutchlow of ninth place with two laps left. Behind the Briton’s Tech 3 Yamaha, Hiroshi Aoyama was a further two seconds back in eleventh, with Edwards, de Puniet and Elias strung out behind to complete the fifteen finishers.
Nicky Hayden crashed out on his Ducati on lap three, while Loris Capirossi had a miserable last race in Italy, pitting on lap three, rejoining and finally retiring on lap nine.
In the post-race press conference, Stoner revealed that it was fatigue that forced him to drop back, which he attributed to the punishing scheduling, which put a European round just one week after Indianapolis, but said he would be back in good shape for Aragon in two weeks time.
All results and stats here: http://www.motogp.com/en/Results+Statistics
