Casey Stoner gave a master-class in wet weather riding to score his 27th MotoGP class Grand Prix win at Silverstone on Sunday. With his 3rd victory in a row he takes the championship lead.
Factory Honda team mate and fellow Red Bull athlete Andrea Dovizioso finished an excellent 2nd and lies 3rd in the title chase.
The joy for Stoner and Dovizioso was at the expense of World Champion Jorge Lorenzo and Marco Simoncelli who both crashed on the water-soaked tarmac.
It was Stoner's 150th Grand Prix appearance in all classes and his 4th win this season and after a dominant performance in various conditions through practice he carried that through the wet and cold race day.
The race got underway in a cloud of spray and Dovizioso and Stoner passed early leader Lorenzo on the 1st lap. Going onto lap 2 Stoner eased past his team mate to take the lead. The race was over, the 25 year old Australian paced himself perfectly and just rode away from the rest.
'Dovi' would have liked to be battling with the leader but could not match his pace, instead he helped Stoner by denying Lorenzo and Simoncelli any chance of giving chase. Dovizioso was brilliant on the brakes and thus defended his 2nd place. First Lorenzo, then Simoncelli both crashed as they tried to find a way of challenging him.
That left Colin Edwards in third, a great ride from the Texan considering the broken collarbone he sustained just 9 days ago in a practice crash at the Grand Prix of Catalunya.
Stoner's victory was so dominant it looked almost easy but the reality was very different. “It was very very hard, I was freezing out there towards the end I could feel my hands at all and didn't know how much brake force I was using. We didn't get off to the best start. Andrea was very confident and I wasn't so sure, I wanted to wait for the tyres to come up to temperature a bit more. Following I got drenched and got water inside my visor so that effected my vision early on making things very difficult. It all worked out though and I have to thank the team for all the hard work this weekend and I am very happy for this win.”
Dovizioso was also pleased to be 2nd. He was on his own for the 2nd half of the race but was under tremendous pressure early on. “I knew the race can be like this so I tried to start as fast as I could. I really wanted to stay in front of the others and this strategy worked. It was very difficult for me to be fast in practice but I never give up and I am very happy with the result.”
Bradl dominates in Moto2
Stefan Bradl continued his domination of the Moto2 Championship in the soaking wet opening race of the day. His only serious challenger was Mattia Pasini who crashed out after briefly taking the lead from the German. Red Bull Athletes Marc Marquez and Kenan Sofuoglu had the chance to feature but both fell in the treacherous conditions. Sofuoglu had been particularly strong, up to 2nd he remounted to take 8th.
Folger wins 125 GP for Red Bull Ajo Motorsport.
German 17 year old Jonas Folger rode brilliantly in the soaking wet conditions to win for the Red Bull Ajo Motorsports Team. He took victory after a great battle with Frenchman Johann Zarco, the 2007 Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup winner.
It was a thrilling struggle with both Zarco and Folger taking their turn to lead and it was only over the closing laps that Folger managed to up the pace to a degree that Zarco could not match to cross the line almost 4 seconds ahead. The pair were another 11 seconds in front of the chasing pack that included Danny Kent, 10th on the 2nd Red Bull Ajo Motorsports machine.
Want more?
- More from the Catalunya MotoGP on Redbull.com
- Official MotoGP website at motogp.com
- Check out the Red Bull Rookies Cup homepage
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