 Dani Pedrosa today transformed pole position to race victory, and he won British Grand Prix miles ahead of Valentino Rossi. Early race leader was Marco Melandri, who had great start from third place on the grid and managed to resist the pressure of Dani Pedrosa for a few laps. However, once Pedrosa got into the front, he never looked back and stretched his lead to almost 4 seconds at the end of the race.
As we saw many times this season, Suzuki riders were strong in opening laps of the race, riding in front of the field, but as race progressed their tyre started loosing grip and they started going backwards. Vermoulen and Hopkins were 3rd and 4th in the opening lap, in front of Stoner and Kenny Roberts Jr. At the end of the race, Hopkins had to settle for 8th place, with Vermeulen eventually fininsing race in 16th place, as he made excursion to the gravel-trap and had to go to box to replace tyre.
Valentino Rossi started race carefully from 12th position, taking riders in front of him from lap to lap. He had lot of work to do, and he did it steadily, catching group of three riders battling for second place Melandri, Stoner and Kenny Roberts in last 10 laps of 30 lap race. Once he closed gap to them, he got in second position, with only Marco Melandri being able to match his pace and fight for second. Rossi and Melandri made great show in last lap, overtaking each other few times, with Rossi eventually winning duel and finishing race in second place.
Casey Stoner again scored great result, 4th place, in front of Kenny Roberts Jr. Colin Edwards rode uninteresting race to eventually finish 6th, in front of Nicky Hayden in 7th. Hayden stared from 11th place on the grid and started making his way through, but mistake early in the race forced him to gravel where he lost lot of time and had to do lot of overtaking again.
Loris Capirossi ended race in 9th place, picking some points for championship battle. Carlos Checa rode his Dunlop shoed Yamaha to great 10th place, edging Makoto Tamada in 11th and Kawasaki of Randy De Puniet. Shinya Nakano on other Kawasaki had to retire from the race and end day without any points. Hofmann brought his Ducati to 13th place, in front of James Ellison and Jose Luis Cardoso geting last points from today's race.
Nicky Hayden stays first in championship after today's race, but his lead to Dani Pedrosa is now reduced to 26 points, with Valentino Rossi also closing gap to him to 35 points.
British Grand Prix - complete race results
MotoGP championship standings
|
