Stoner blitzes French MotoGP

Talk about eventful MotoGP racing! The 2011 Grand Prix de France saw thrills and spills, with Casey Stoner recording a triumphant win -- his first ever at first Le Mans -- with team mate Andrea Dovizioso making it a Repsol Honda one-two finish.

With fine weather on race day, a record number of race fans flocked to the event, with 88,400 people attending the race on the Sunday, a large majority of whom cheered Valentino Rossi on to his first podium finish for Ducati with a third place, after duelling with fourth-placed Jorge Lorenzo mid-way through the race.

Meanwhile it was a torrid day for Dani Pedrosa who, while battling with Marco Simoncelli for second place two-thirds into the race, was clipped by the Italian, breaking his collarbone as he crashed out of the race.

Simoncelli was given a ride-through penalty for an "illegal manoeuvre" dropping him from second place to finish fifth and with Pedrosa out of the race, Dovizioso and Rossi steamed onto the podium.

Casey stoner started from the front of the grid but was overtaken by Pedrosa off the line, only to regain the lead shortly after, and then extended his lead, stamping his authority on the race to win by 14 seconds.

"We went into the race confident, at the beginning of the race Pedrosa was very fast and he was difficult to pass, as he was being cautious. When I overtook him I thought I might be able to take some advantage but he was able to match my times and follow me for some laps, so I continued to push more than I prefer to and eventually I put a gap between us.

"From this point, the race came to me and I was able to focus on my consistency and win. My thoughts are with Pedrosa at this moment, I hope he can recover soon as he is a very strong contender for this championship,” noted Stoner.

Having qualified in pole position and finishing on top of the podium for his 25th premier class win, Stoner is now second in the overall standings on 66 points, 12 points behind championship leader Lorenzo on 78. Pedrosa sits in third place on 61 points. Check out the full leaderboard table below.

Ben Spies finished in sixth place after being tracked down by Simoncelli after the Italian completed his ride-through penalty, having to cruise through pit-lane at 60km/h, while Nicky Hayden was seventh, followed by Hiroshi Aoyama in eighth.

French fans would have been crestfallen to see local lad Randy de Puniet crash out of the race on lap two, ending in a lonely walk back to the pits in front of his home crowd.

While Stoner took out the win, the talking point of the race was arguably the incident between Marco Simocelli and Dani Pedrosa, with former Australian motorcycle GP winner Daryl Beattie commenting after the race that the ride-through penalty on Simoncelli was an "embarrassment" for the sport. He said that racing often involves a few hard knocks and that the race stewards got it completely wrong.

Here's the two sides of the story from the riders' points of view:

“Pedrosa tried to overtake me on the straight. When we were braking I did it normally, like in the other laps, but I was faster than him so I tried to overtake him round the outside and when I was a little bit in front of him I started to take the corner. I tried to leave him space to make his own corner. I saw in the video that his bike was hopping a little bit and he lost the line, he touched me, when I saw he couldn’t make the corner I picked the bike up but it was too late. He touched me on the back and he crashed."

"I am so sorry about his crash and about his injury, especially. For me I haven’t done anything incorrect, so for me this is a race ‘action’ (incident)."

"For me the punishment from Race Direction was because of all the controversy of the last few days, and from Estoril. For me if the same thing happened without me they would penalise nobody. This is my point of view," said an indignant Simoncelli.

"I was having a good race, the goal was to ensure another podium and I had it in my grasp. Now it counts for nothing," said a visibly upset Dani Pedrosa.

"Simoncelli overtook me, I passed him back and I had the better line. He just came into me, releasing the brakes and I could do nothing. I leave here with a broken collarbone and he with a ride through penalty, good for him! Yet again I come out worse off. We only just recovered from the nightmare of the last operation and now I’m hurt again. It is very unfair, I don’t deserve it," concluded Pedrosa.

While the MotoGP championship has tightened up considerably with Stoner eyeing off the top spot from Lorenzo, the focus will no doubt be on the Pedrosa-Simoncelli relationship for the next few months, which has the potential deliver yet more 'full contact' motorsport.

1 Jorge LORENZO Yamaha SPA 78
2 Casey STONER Honda AUS 66
3 Dani PEDROSA Honda SPA 61
4 Andrea DOVIZIOSO Honda ITA 50
5 Valentino ROSSI Ducati ITA 47
6 Nicky HAYDEN Ducati USA 39
7 Hiroshi AOYAMA Honda JPN 36
8 Marco SIMONCELLI Honda ITA 22
9 Colin EDWARDS Yamaha USA 21
10 Hector BARBERA Ducati SPA 21
11 Cal CRUTCHLOW Yamaha GBR 21
12 Ben SPIES Yamaha USA 20
13 Karel ABRAHAM Ducati CZE 18
14 Toni ELIAS Honda SPA 17
15 Loris CAPIROSSI Ducati ITA 9
16 Alvaro BAUTISTA Suzuki SPA 7
17 Randy DE PUNIET Ducati FRA 6
18 John HOPKINS Suzuki USA 6

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