Daily Update MotoGP

Laguna Seca Moto GP Result :
Pos Rider Bike Time/Gap
1. Dani Pedrosa Honda 44m01.580s
2. Valentino Rossi Yamaha + 0.344s
3. Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha + 1.926s
4. Casey Stoner Ducati + 12.432s
5. Nicky Hayden Ducati + 21.663s
6. Toni Elias Gresini Honda + 22.041s
7. Colin Edwards Tech 3 Yamaha + 30.201s
8. Chris Vermeulen Suzuki + 32.857s
9. Randy de Puniet LCR Honda + 40.325s
10. Marco Melandri Hayate Kawasaki + 48.028s
11. Alex de Angelis Gresini Honda + 48.810s
12. Niccolo Canepa Pramac Ducati +1m18.531s

Retirements:

Andrea Dovizioso Honda 6 laps
Sete Gibernau Hernando Ducati 6 laps
Loris Capirossi Suzuki 3 laps
Gabor Talmacsi Scot Honda 3 laps
James Toseland Tech 3 Yamaha DSQ

Dani Pedrosa has taken his and Honda's first victory in more than a year with a commanding yet tight victory in the United States Grand Prix.

The Spaniard, who made a perfect start from fourth on the grid to take the lead before the first corner, opened a lead of over three seconds mid-way through the 32-lap race, but while slowing down towards the end he risked being overtaken by Valentino Rossi at the very last corner.

Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner, who suffered major crashes in yesterday's qualifying at Laguna Seca, both had fine performances today.

The Yamaha rider, who was not even sure he would be fit enough to take part in the race before this morning's warm-up, made a great recovery and almost managed to snatch second away from team-mate Rossi.

Stoner stayed with Rossi for the first twenty laps before suffering a dip in performance that in the end saw the Ducati man finish ten seconds away from Lorenzo at the chequered flag.

Behind Pedrosa immediately taking the lead at the start, Stoner got ahead of Rossi, with Toni Elias's Gresini Honda and Andrea Dovizioso's factory Honda following behind.

Lorenzo made a bad gateway from pole and was soon down in eighth place, with Americans Colin Edwards (Tech 3 Yamaha) and Nicky Hayden (Ducati) also getting ahead of him. But by the end of the first lap Lorenzo was fifth, which became fourth on lap seven when Dovizioso crashed after losing grip at the front.

Positions soon settled, with all the excitement left for the end, when with five laps to go Lorenzo tried to overtake Rossi at the last corner but wobbled dangerously and barely managed to stay on the bike. The move resulted in him going wide and losing a second from the Italian.

Back then Pedrosa had 2.5s over the Yamaha duo, but that lead dropped to 1.5s at the beginning of the last lap, with the former 250cc champion further slowing down and allowing Rossi to catch him after the Corkscrew.

The reigning world champion tried all he could at the last corner, where he tried to outbrake Pedrosa from a long way behind, but it was just too far.

Stoner eventually fell 12s adrift of the leaders as he took fourth, ahead of his Ducati team-mate Hayden. The American enjoyed his best race of a difficult 2009 season as he fended off Elias to take fifth.

The race saw unusually high attrition. Gabor Talmacsi (Scot Honda) and Loris Capirossi (Suzuki) both retired on lap four, with the Hungarian crashing and the Italian having an off after which he went back to the pits and got off the bike. Sete Gibernau also crashed his Hernando Ducati on lap eight and retired on the spot.

James Toseland made a jump start from 15th on the grid and was penalised with a ride-through on lap five. But the Briton failed to comply with the penalty and on lap 11 was shown the black flag, after which he inexplicably did the ride-through on lap 12 and retired his Tech 3 Yamaha on the next lap.
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Result GP Catalunya 2009
CLASSIFIED:
Pos Rider Bike Time
1. Valentino Rossi Yamaha 43m11.897s
2. Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha + 0.095s
3. Casey Stoner Ducati + 8.884s
4. Andrea Dovizioso Honda + 8.936s
5. Loris Capirossi Suzuki + 19.831s
6. Daniel Pedrosa Honda + 22.182s
7. Colin Edwards Yamaha + 23.547s
8. Randy de Puniet Honda + 25.265s
9. Mika Kallio Ducati + 31.797s
10. Nicky Hayden Ducati + 33.593s
11. Chris Vermeulen Suzuki + 36.683s
12. Alex de Angelis Honda + 36.874s
13. James Toseland Yamaha + 39.433s
14. Marco Melandri Kawasaki + 44.788s
15. Sete Gibernau Ducati + 46.754s
16. Niccolo Canepa Ducati + 55.873s
17. Gabor Talmacsi Honda +1m27.640s

NOT CLASSIFIED/RETIREMENTS:
Toni Elias Honda 9
Yuki Takahashi Honda 0

Valentino Rossi has beaten Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo in a thrilling finish to MotoGP's Grand Prix of Catalunya.

The two riders completely dominated the Barcelona race and fought tooth and nail in the last three laps of the race, with the outcome being set at the very last corner.

Italy's Rossi took the lead back from local hero Lorenzo at the first turn with three laps to go. Exactly one lap later Lorenzo tried to take the lead back and went ahead on the straight, but Rossi managed to outbrake the Spaniard on the outside of the track and keep the position.

Lorenzo, however, made his move stick at the beginning of the last lap. Rossi managed to respond in the overtaking spot in the middle of the lap, but went wide and Lorenzo kept the lead.

But at the entry of the last corner the reigning world champion sneaked through and somehow managed to find the apex, preventing Lorenzo from getting back ahead.

Best of the rest was Ducati's Casey Stoner, who finished more than eight seconds behind the leading pair, but managed to held of the challenge from Honda's Andrea Dovizioso and beat him by half a tenth.

Today's result means that the top three riders now jointly lead the championship at 106 points after six races in the season.

Loris Capirossi took fifth place with his Suzuki, ahead of Dani Pedrosa's works Honda and Colin Edwards's Tech 3 Yamaha.

Randy de Puniet (LCR Honda), Mika Kallio (Pramac Ducati) and Nicky Hayden (Ducati) rounded up the top ten.

Yuki Takahashi crashed his Scot Honda into the barriers during the first lap, while Toni Elias fell from his Gresini Honda on lap 10 of the 25-lap race having quickly fallen back from his fifth-place start.
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GP Mugelo Race Result
Pos Rider Bike Time
1. Casey Stoner Ducati 45m41.894s
2. Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha + 1.001s
3. Valentino Rossi Yamaha + 2.076s
4. Andrea Dovizioso Honda + 2.129s
5. Loris Capirossi Suzuki + 3.274s
6. Colin Edwards Tech 3 Yamaha + 24.451s
7. James Toseland Tech 3 Yamaha + 25.621s
8. Randy de Puniet LCR Honda + 26.046s
9. Niccolo Canepa Pramac Ducati + 31.815s
10. Chris Vermeulen Suzuki + 34.814s
11. Marco Melandri Hayate Kawasaki + 35.090s
12. Nicky Hayden Ducati + 39.122s
13. Mika Kallio Pramac Ducati + 52.462s
14. Toni Elias Gresini Honda + 52.478s
15. Alex de Angelis Gresini Honda + 1 lap

Retirements:

Dani Pedrosa Honda 12 laps
Yuki Takahashi Scot Honda 9 laps

Casey Stoner took Ducati's first Mugello victory and ended Valentino Rossi's seven-year run of wins at his home track by beating the two Yamahas to victory in a wet-dry Italian Grand Prix.

Rossi had to settle for third, behind his team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, who took second despite crashing his main bike on the way to the grid and then making a very poor start from pole.

The race began with the track still damp, and Stoner burst into the lead off the line, but only briefly before wet weather specialist Chris Vermeulen thrust his Suzuki to the front.

This pair and Honda's Andrea Dovizioso proceeded to swap the lead through the opening stages, with Rossi lurking close behind and Marco Melandri revelling in the conditions and charging through towards the top five on the Hayate Kawasaki.

Lorenzo recovered from his pre-race error and wheel-spinning start to soon rejoin this pack on his spare bike while Yamaha worked to repair his original machine in time for the bike changes as the weather improved.

Dovizioso managed to get around both Vermeulen and Stoner on lap three, and as the track began to dry, Rossi and the flying Melandri further demoted the Suzuki and Ducati and lined up to challenge Dovizioso for the lead.

Rossi hit the front for the first time on lap nine, with Melandri following him past Dovizioso and the Honda rider diving into the pits for his slick-shod bike just afterwards.

Melandri's charge was not finished, and he brilliantly passed Rossi to take the lead - from 15th on the grid - before they too switched to slicks at the end of lap 10.

Though they rejoined in front, Dovizioso's additional lap on dry tyres paid dividends, and he swept into the lead as his countrymen tried to get their rubber up to temperature.

Melandri soon started falling down the order on the dry track, while Rossi - who had taken a hard slick tyre - was unable to get up to speed as quickly as Stoner and Suzuki's Loris Capirossi, who demoted the Yamahas and set off after Dovizioso.

The Italian had led by three seconds, but soon had both Stoner and Capirossi not only on his tail, but slicing past to push him back to third.

Capirossi, in his best ride since joining Suzuki last year, then attacked Stoner and took the lead of his home race for one glorious lap before the Ducati got back ahead and started edging away.

Both Capirossi and Dovizioso then began fading, and as the Yamahas picked up pace in the closing stages, Lorenzo and Rossi charged back through to second and third. The podium spot - which he hung on to despite a late resurgence from Dovizioso - was scant consolation for Rossi as his remarkable home winning streak ended.

Colin Edwards beat his Tech 3 Yamaha team-mate James Toseland to sixth, the Briton having flown up the order after being the first to gamble on slicks.

Randy de Puniet (LCR Honda) took eighth, followed by a breakthrough performance by Pramac Ducati's Niccolo Canepa, another man to make an early bike swap. Vermeulen and Melandri fell back to 10th and 11th in the dry.

There was more bad news for the injury-blighted Dani Pedrosa (Honda), who crashed heavily before half-distance while running in the midfield and required medical assistance. The Spaniard had already been struggling for fitness this weekend after damaging the muscles in his right hip when his body was jarred while catching a slide in practice.
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Valentino Rossi believes his early change to dry tyres in the French Grand Prix would have paid off had he not crashed.

The world champion failed to score after sliding off his Yamaha on his first lap on slicks on the still-damp Le Mans track. His team-mate Jorge Lorenzo stayed out much longer and went on to win the race, although Dani Pedrosa - who stopped on the same lap as Rossi - managed to take third.

"We started the race without having done a single lap in the wet," Rossi told Italia1. "By the fourth lap I was having some difficulties already, especially in the right turns the bike was sliding a lot, so I decided to pit.

"In my opinion it was not a wrong decision, but the problem was that I made a mistake and crashed. Certainly it would have been better to pit two laps later, because at the point where I crashed and in two other points there was still a bit too much water. I got there slowly, but obviously not enough."

He admitted that he had been trying to gamble to beat his rivals on strategy. because it was clear that other riders were faster in the race.

"Absolutely. I was struggling a bit in the wet," said Rossi. "I started well and was second already, but I wasn't feeling good, Lorenzo was opening the gap, and [Andrea] Dovizioso and [Marco] Melandri behind me were edging closer, so I thought it was better to pit immediately and be ready with the slicks.

"It wasn't a wrong idea, because in the same conditions at Motegi [in 2007 Loris] Capirossi managed to win after pitting so early. The problem was that I made a mistake: I lost the front and there was nothing I could do about it.

"I tried to carry on in the hope of getting a lonely point in such a hard-fought championship, and also to get the anger out. But no one retired ahead of us, so this is the first zero for us this season. It's a shame, so we start over at Mugello."

Rossi said the whole Le Mans weekend had been one to forget.

"It went more or less bad all weekend because we've had many problems, and we've never been as competitive as we wanted to," he said.

"We've made some mistakes in the bike's set-up, the weather never gave us a hand, so I was never as strong as we had expected. We must understand why of course."
ref[AS]
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Jorge Lorenzo dominated the French Grand Prix in damp conditions at Le Mans and took the lead in the MotoGP championship.
Not only did the Yamaha man ride magnificently, he was also the most strategically clever, and now moves back to the head of the standings thanks to a crash by his Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi.

All riders started the race with bikes set up for rainy conditions, after the event was declared wet, meaning that riders could pit during the 28-lap race to switch to bikes set up for the dry.
But while most of Lorenzo's rivals started pitting early, the Spaniard stayed out the longest and kept widening his lead. He only pitted when the rest of the field started creeping closer, and in the space of a couple of laps his gap started increasing again.
Lorenzo, who lost a position at the start after starting from second on the grid, but was at the front by the end of the lap, after overtaking Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa.
In the end, he won by more than 17 seconds over the incredible Marco Melandri, whose Hayate-entered Kawasaki is regarded as the least competitive package on the grid.
The Italian, who had a terrible 2008 with Ducati and an uncertain winter with his switch to Kawasaki just before the works team quit, had a fantastic race that saw him cutting through the field from ninth on the grid and then flying on slick tyres on a still-damp track.
At one point, after Lorenzo pitted and was acclimatising to the slick tyres, it looked like Melandri could even take the lead, with the gap to the leader shrinking from 13 down to five seconds. When the distance between the two started widening again, Melandri settled down and allowed the riders following him to finish just two seconds behind.
Pedrosa, who started from pole, managed to snatch third from Honda team-mate Andrea Dovizioso with just three turns to go on the last lap, after making up seven seconds on the Italian in the last ten laps of the race. The Spaniard had lost ground in the wet early laps, and changed to slicks prematurely.
Casey Stoner took fifth with his Ducati after a dip in form midway through the race, followed by Suzukis of Chris Vermeulen and Loris Capirossi, with Colin Edwards's Tech 3 Yamaha in between the blue bikes.
Edwards's team-mate James Toseland and Toni Elias (Honda Gresini) rounded up the top ten.
Rossi finished last, and now trails team-mate Lorenzo by one point in the standings.
The eight-time world champion, who managed to slot into second by the fourth lap, crashed just a few turns after being the first to switch bikes on lap five. He managed to rejoin the track with a damaged bike after a few seconds had gone by, so that he could switch bikes again.
But he forgot to switch on the speed limiter after pitting and had to suffer a ride-through. In the end he pit once more to switch bikes and carried on with the race in the hope of scoring points, but failed and finished 16th, two laps behind Lorenzo.

Pos Rider Bike Time
1. Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha 47m52.678s
2. Marco Melandri Hayate Kawasaki + 17.710s
3. Dani Pedrosa Honda + 19.893s
4. Andrea Dovizioso Honda + 20.455s
5. Casey Stoner Ducati + 30.539s
6. Chris Vermeulen Suzuki + 37.462s
7. Colin Edwards Tech 3 Yamaha + 40.191s
8. Loris Capirossi Suzuki + 45.421s
9. James Toseland Tech 3 Yamaha + 50.307s
10. Toni Elias Gresini Honda + 53.218s
11. Alex de Angelis Gresini Honda + 53.550s
12. Nicky Hayden Ducati + 56.647s
13. Yuki Takahashi Scot Honda + 56.688s
14. Randy de Puniet LCR Honda +1m11.299s
15. Niccolo Canepa Pramac Ducati +1m15.385s
16. Valentino Rossi Yamaha + 2 laps
Retirements:
Mika Kallio Pramac Ducati 11 laps
ref[AS]
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Dani Pedrosa beat his championship rivals to snatch pole position ahead of tomorrow's French MotoGP at Le Mans.
The Honda rider managed a superb effort right at the last second to sneak ahead of the three men who are currently in front of him in the points standings.
The Spaniard's time of 1m33.974s beat Jorge Lorenzo's (Yamaha) by the tiny margin of 0.005 seconds, followed by Casey Stoner's Ducati a further seven hundredths behind completing the front row.

Championship leader Valentino Rossi, on the second works Yamaha, was never a proper threat for pole, managing to lead the session only in the first quarter of an hour. Ultimately he had to settle for fourth, 0.132s behind Pedrosa.
Andrea Dovizioso managed a fifth spot on the grid with his Honda, followed by Colin Edwards (Tech 3 Yamaha), who led proceedings in the middle part of the session, and the Suzukis of Chris Vermeulen and Loris Capirossi.
Marco Melandri will start the race from ninth position after the Italian lost the front of his Hayate Kawasaki at the half-hour mark, crashed and tumbled. His left hand was slightly hurt when it got caught under the handlebar, but he was able to resume riding after walking back to the pits.
Randy de Puniet completes the top ten despite a crash with his LCR Honda with only seven minutes of the session gone.

Pos Rider Bike Time
1. Dani Pedrosa Honda 1m33.974s
2. Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha 1m33.979s + 0.005s
3. Casey Stoner Ducati 1m34.049s + 0.075s
4. Valentino Rossi Yamaha 1m34.106s + 0.132s
5. Andrea Dovizioso Honda 1m34.300s + 0.326s
6. Colin Edwards Tech 3 Yamaha 1m34.330s + 0.356s
7. Chris Vermeulen Suzuki 1m34.676s + 0.702s
8. Loris Capirossi Suzuki 1m34.839s + 0.865s
9. Marco Melandri Hayate Kawasaki 1m35.008s + 1.034s
10. Randy de Puniet LCR Honda 1m35.399s + 1.425s
11. Toni Elias Gresini Honda 1m35.431s + 1.457s
12. James Toseland Tech 3 Yamaha 1m35.524s + 1.550s
13. Nicky Hayden Ducati 1m35.682s + 1.708s
14. Mika Kallio Pramac Ducati 1m35.741s + 1.767s
15. Yuki Takahashi Scot Honda 1m35.774s + 1.800s
16. Alex de Angelis Gresini Honda 1m35.785s + 1.811s
17. Niccolo Canepa Pramac Ducati 1m36.136s + 2.162s

ref[AS]


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Troy Bayliss says he will test for Ducati again within the next two months after pleasing the team with his contribution to its work at Mugello this week.
The triple Superbike world champion was drafted in as Ducati worked to make its bike more 'rider-friendly' and to get all five of its entries near the front of the field.

So far this year, Stoner has been Ducati's only podium contender, for while Pramac's Mika Kallio has had some impressive rides, the Finn's team-mate Niccolo Canepa, Stoner's team-mate Nicky Hayden, and Hernando Ducati rider Sete Gibernau have all struggled to get beyond the midfield.
Bayliss said he had been pleased with his pace and to assist Ducati, but emphasised that a comeback was definitely not on his agenda.
"I've had three good days during which I've felt like a rider again", said Bayliss. "It didn't take long to get back into it but, before anyone gets any ideas, I will also say that I'm happy to be heading back to the airport and towards Australia and home this evening: I have no intention of returning to racing.
"Having said that, I have had fun and I hope at the same time that I've been of use to [technical director] Filippo [Preziosi]. We worked each day on the bike and each day I was able to push harder, until I started to record some respectable times.
"Now I'll stay home for a while but later in June or July I'll be back in Europe for a few weeks. I will probably test the bike again during that time, I don't know exactly when, but I am very happy to play a part in this project."
Bayliss eventually got down to a 1m51.2s lap - just over a second off the best race lap at Mugello last year, and 0.2 seconds faster than the team's test rider Vittoriano Guareschi managed during the sessions.
Preziosi said Bayliss had definitely helped the team towards its goal of making the GP9 suit all its riders.
"Working with Troy has been useful because he has a very different riding style to Vittoriano," said Preziosi, "and so it's been interesting and beneficial to hear his impressions of the GP9 also.
"We worked on chassis set-ups that are pretty different from those which we usually use and the results were promising, although we need to look at this further."
ref[AS]
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