Pedrosa and Stoner on the podium again

Local hero Marco Simoncelli (San Carlo Honda Gresini) came out best from a breathtaking last-lap duel for fourth place with Andrea Dovizioso (Repsol Honda) to make it four Honda RCVs in the top five.

Stoner took pole position in yesterday afternoon’s qualifying session, but was by no means confident of scoring a fourth consecutive victory to further strengthen his lead in the World Championship. Stoner, Lorenzo and Pedrosa were covered by just 0.18s in qualifying, so all three men predicted that today’s race would be a close-run thing.

Pre-race tension was heightened by a smattering of rainfall before the start and during the first laps, but the rain never got anywhere heavy enough to force riders into the pits to swap to their ‘wet’ bikes.

Lorenzo made his intentions clear by snatching the lead into the first corner and despite the best efforts of Stoner and Pedrosa the Spaniard stayed there for the entire 28 laps. Wary of being in front with spots of rain falling here and there, Stoner was happy to stay behind his title rival during the early laps, while Pedrosa shadowed the pair in third.

That’s the way it stayed until lap 12 when Lorenzo upped his pace to set the fastest lap of the race and double his lead to more than a second. Within another half dozen laps he was more than three seconds ahead as Stoner began to struggle, apparently running out of strength, a result of jetlag and subsequent sleep deprivation following last weekend’s Indianapolis Grand Prix.

Stoner’s target had now changed, from winning the race to defending second place, but he was struggling to get his bike stopped and was therefore running wide in the turns, which threw him back into the clutches of his team-mate.

There are no team orders at Repsol Honda, so Pedrosa sped past Stoner into the high-speed Curvone right-hander with six laps to go. Pedrosa could do nothing about the leader, however, though his second consecutive runner-up spot did move him slightly closer on points to third-placed Dovizioso.

Dovizioso ran fourth in the early stages, then came under successful attack from long-time rival Simoncelli, but he rallied his forces in the final ten laps as he came under pressure from Ben Spies (Yamaha). With three laps to go Dovizioso rode past Simoncelli, with Spies looking to get in on the act. On the last lap Simoncelli once more overtook his fellow Italian and the trio were pretty much side by side as they rode into the slow-speed Quercia left-hander for the last time.

Dovizioso and Spies squeezed past Simoncelli but both ran wide, allowing Simoncelli (who hails from Cattolica, just a few kilometres from the track) to sneak back ahead. Simoncelli beat Dovizioso over the line by 0.037s, with Spies a further seven tenths down.

The MotoGP and Moto2 paddock reconvenes in a fortnight’s time for the Aragon Grand Prix in Spain, the last European round of the championship before November’s season-finale at Valencia, also in Spain.

Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC212V): 2nd

“I’m a little disappointed with the race because the bike didn’t feel as good as it was in practice. We wanted to make a change to the suspension to improve it a little, but we had the opposite effect. Sometimes it happens. Jorge had a perfect race today, but I was able improve my times lap by lap and catch Casey. I overtook him and maintained my rhythm to the finish with another second place in two weekends, which is not so bad.”

Casey Stoner, Repsol Honda: 3rd

“At the beginning of the race I was cautious as there were a few spots of rain. Once this cleared up I was pretty comfortable behind Jorge, I didn’t feel the need to push and then the tiredness suddenly hit me. There was nothing wrong with the tyres, nothing wrong with the bike, the team did a great job and gave me a fantastic package. I’m just worn out. This together with the neck injury from Assen, which I’ve been struggling to recover from has finally caught up with me. For the second half of the race I was just too tired, simple as that. All credit to Jorge, he had a fantastic race, hopefully by Aragon I’ll be fully fit and recovered.”

Marco Simoncelli, San Carlo Honda Gresini: 4th

“A podium finish is always more satisfying than fourth place, but this result feels just as nice because it was such a close and hard fight at the end. I had to make up ground and when I got to fourth place I defended it tooth and nail to win a wonderful battle with Dovizioso and Spies on the last lap. I had held fourth for 23 laps and I couldn’t let myself lose it at the end. I had fun and I think I provided some excitement for my fans. They deserve it because they have backed me through some tough times.”

Andrea Dovizioso, Repsol Honda: 5th

“It was a tough race, I had to push hard and ride aggressively and we had to cut the power a lot due to fuel consumption issues. We suffered from this during the whole race weekend, but after warm-up I received the bad news that we had to cut even more power. We had a good battle with Marco and Spies. On this occasion, for the first time this season, Marco beat me so congratulations to Marco. It was a good battle but our target was to gain some points on Lorenzo and we didn’t manage to. We are still third in the championship which is the most important thing. We are confident and will continue working.”

Credit content: http://www.world.honda.com Photo: http://www.MotoGP.com