Pedrosa powers to victory

After a race-long duel with fellow Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo, Honda’s Dani Pedrosa raced to victory in the Portugese MotoGP race at Estoril on May 1, with Australia’s Casey Stoner finishing in third position. It was Pedrosa’s first win at the Estoril circuit in any class.

Pedrosa, who only recently had surgery on his injured shoulder, had been seemingly pacing himself behind the leader Lorenzo until the final three laps, before passing the Yamaha rider down the straight and then delivering a succession of fastest laps to pass the chequered flag first.

Pedrosa finished just over three seconds ahead of the reigning world champion and closed the gap on Lorenzo’s lead in the standings to just 4pts. Pedrosa’s triumph also prevented the pole sitter clinching four successive victories at the Estoril circuit.

“I'm very happy for today's win, but more than the win, I'm happy for my condition and it seems that my surgery was finally successful,” said Pedrosa. “I was trying to rest my arm at times as it was cramping with 15 laps to go. I was riding behind Lorenzo and waiting for the numbness to come together with the loss of power, but it didn't come!

“I'm just so happy to see that the surgery has worked, it's been around six months with this and it's a big relief. For the race, I was riding at my best, Lorenzo is amazing here, always riding so smooth and fast and I was trying to stay with him. In the end, I felt comfortable and tried to make a move and I was successful.

“I'm very happy to win here, it's my first win on this track and thanks to all the doctors, my physio and trainer because it's been hard work and finally we got a win.”

Stoner had a lonely race in third and was over seven seconds behind his team-mate Pedrosa. The former MotoGP world champion has never won at Estoril (one of only five circuits the Australian has failed to clinch victory at).

“I didn't really have a lot of confidence in the first laps with the rear tyre, it didn't seem to want to work so well, especially on the left side, I nearly crashed a few times so I slowed down a little,” said Stoner.

“Then during the race at some point, I felt my back completely lock up on me and I couldn't move for three or four corners. I was struggling to do anything and had no breath. I thought I had to go back to the garage, but thankfully within half a lap it eased up a little, got better and we managed to finish, so I'm very happy to stay in third place today.”

The eyes were all on the battle behind the Australian between Valentino Rossi (Ducati) and Andrea Dovizioso (Honda). Dovizioso stayed close to Rossi throughout the race and managed to snatch the fourth place on the very last lap as they crossed the start finish line, by a mere 0.025 seconds.

The nine-time world champion’s previous lowest result here in Estoril had been a fourth place from 11 starts, before the pass from his fellow compatriot over the line.

Colin Edwards (Yamaha) arrived home in sixth position, ahead of Hiroshi Aoyama (Honda) and Cal Crutchlow (Yamaha).

Crutchlow was one of many riders racing following an operation and has continued to pick up points in his first season in the premier class.

Nicky Hayden (Ducati) was ninth, after racing with Ben Spies early on and the final place in the top 10 went to Frenchman Randy de Puniet (Ducati) who was recovering after an operation on his leg.

Marco Simoncelli (Honda), who started from the first row, while Ben Spies (Yamaha) struggled on his second visit to Estoril after several excursions off the track and dropping down to 10th. The American then crashed and was unable to restart the bike.

Meanwhile, Anthony West (MZ) finished a lowly 27th out of 29 finishers in the Moto2 race, won by Stefan Bradl ahead Julian Simon and Yukio Takahashi, while it was better news for Australia in the Red Bull Rookies Cup with Arthur Sissis charging to his second win of the year and a 27pt lead in the championship.

Sissis was second in race one on Saturday, behind Brand Binder.

“I really enjoyed that, we'd made some changes to the bike after yesterday and it was a lot better but I knew that racing with Brad was not going to be easy,” said Sissis after race two.

“He got another great start and I just tried to go with him. Then he highsided in front of me and that made things a lot easier.”

Click on the following link for full results and standings from Estoril.