Dani Pedrosa runs away with Motorland Aragon race

with Twowheelsblog

After the Misano GP fiasco and yesterday’s qualifying crash, Dani Pedrosa never gave up and gave himself a late birthday present by winning today’s Motorland Aragon race with a huge margin to take his fourth victory of the season, and shorten Jorge Lorenzo’s lead in the standings to 33 points with four races left in the championship.

Lorenzo got the holeshot and tried to break away immediately and put some space between himself and the rest of the field, but Pedrosa wasn’t allowing him to escape and began pushing his Honda and chased him down and began shadowing him and on the fifth lap at turn 12 made his move and passed the Yamaha rider. Lorenzo tried to answer back but on the 9th lap had a huge moment, losing the rear of his M1 almost going into a highside but he managed to save it and Lorenzo decided that second place was good enough and settled in as Pedrosa widened the gap even further.

The most exciting part of the race was between the other three Yamaha riders, Ben Spies, Andrea Dovizioso and Cal Crutchlow after Stefan Bradl crashed out of third after passing Spies. Dovizioso made his move on the factory rider with ten laps to go and just one lap later Crutchlow did the same and the two broke away with the Brit on all over the Italian’s tail as the last lap began and so did the podium battle. Crutchlow tried to block pass his team mate, but the Italian got a better drive at the last turn to sail past the Englishman and claim his sixth podium of the year

Spies ended up in fifth followed by Alvaro Bautista who finished in a lonely sixth after starting in 12th on the grid also aided by a number of errors made by the riders in front of him. Jonathan Rea’s second MotoGP race replacing injuried Casey Stoner finished a solid seventh and one place higher than in his first race at Misano.

For Ducati it was a horrible race, with both factory riders involved in two separate incidents. Valentino Rossi tried to pass Rea on the inside during the opening lap and the two almost touched and the Italian ran off track and rejoined last and had to ride through the field to finish in 8th, but he also had another off track excursion.

Nicky Hayden got off even worse. The American ran off track on the final turn and headed straight towards the barrier (not an air fence) and then the Ducati smashed into the fence with Hayden flying over the fence. The Kentucky Kid had to be transported to the medical center, but he was cleared from any serious injuries, but the doctors decided to send him to the local hospital for a further check-up.

Karel Abraham and Aleix Espargaro closed out the top ten. With Espargaro beating his Aspar team mate Randy de Puniet who finished ahead of Ducati rider Hector Barbera, who was probably all banged up after his big crash this morning in warm-up practice.

MotoGP Motorland Aragon Race Results:

01- Dani Pedrosa – Repsol Honda Team – Honda RC213V – 23 laps 42’10.444
02- Jorge Lorenzo – Yamaha Factory Racing – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 6.472
03- Andrea Dovizioso – Monster Yamaha Tech 3 – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 11.047
04- Cal Crutchlow – Monster Yamaha Tech 3 – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 11.184
05- Ben Spies – Yamaha Factory Racing – Yamaha YZR M1 – + 13.786
06- Alvaro Bautista – San Carlo Honda Gresini – Honda RC213V – + 28.166
07- Jonathan Rea – Repsol Honda Team – Honda RC213V – + 32.290
08- Valentino Rossi – Ducati Team – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 44.432
09- Karel Abraham – Cardion AB Motoracing – Ducati Desmosedici GP12 – + 57.417
10- Aleix Espargaro – Power Electronics Aspar – ART GP12 – + 58.525