Rossi wins bitter tussle

As the MotoGP world championship heads into the second half of the season, it became very clear just how motivated Italian Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) is to regain the world crown. He and reigning champ Aussie Casey Stoner were swapping paint on numerous occasions, to the extent that Rossi even took off across the dirt in one desperate attempt to pass.

In the end, the situation was resolved when a rattled Stoner appeared to out-brake himself, leaving Rossi the victor. Nevertheless, the Stoner gathered up his Ducati and managed to recover second place from the near-disaster, with fellow Australian Chris Vermeulen coming in a credible third on his Suzuki.

Rossi's team-mate Jorge Lorenzo is continuing his rotten run of luck. His crash over the weekend will put him in a cast for at least ten days, and a splint for some time after that.

Meanwhile Yamaha is firming up its line-up, with Rossi signed on for two more years and Colin Edwards committed for another year.

Here's what they had to say...

Valentino Rossi, 1st, Yamaha:
What a race today! We made some modifications to our bike after warm-up and these gave us the last few tenths that enabled me to fight with Casey today; the result was just fantastic. I got a good start and I was able to pass him in the first lap, but I knew I had to try and stay in front of him and it was impossible to relax even for one second. My M1 was brilliant and so were my Bridgestone tyres; I really only made one mistake, at the corkscrew when I went a bit wide but in fact the dirt had quite good grip also! Casey was a bit faster on the straight than me but I was stronger on the brakes so I had to make all my passes there. I don't know how many times we changed the lead but it was a lot and it was great, great racing for me and I think also for the fans, because it's been a while since we've been like this. To stay in front I had to do high 21s at least on every lap and I want to thank my team and engineers for giving me a bike that could do this. I had a great rhythm and I am really so happy to win for the first time in America. About the passes, I am sorry that Casey thinks some of them were a bit strong but I really don't agree; I passed only on the brakes, I braked in the same places every time and we never touched. Of course this was an aggressive race, but it was definitely a fair one. Now we have the summer break and I am looking forward to relaxing a bit, but not too much because it's going to be a hard fight for the final seven races and we must keep the concentration!"

Casey Stoner, 2nd, Ducati:
"At the end of the day I'm not happy because I've made a mistake and it has cost me the chance to win this race, but I also think that even if he rode a great race, some of Valentino's moves early in the race were too aggressive. Anyway, we can't do anything about that now - the important thing is that we've come away from here with 20 valuable points and after being written off in some quarters four races ago we now go on our summer holiday with a fighting chance of winning the title again. We're 25 points behind, which is a big gap, but there are seven races left and a lot can happen. We can take a lot of positives out of this weekend - mainly the fact that all the hard work by everybody at Ducati and Bridgestone has paid off again."

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