Three cheers for Dani
Spaniard zooms away from Lorenzo in rain-shortened Motogp
DANI Pedrosa showed he is the master of the wet as he bagged his third straight MotoGP victory with a commanding performance in a rainshortened Malaysian Motorcycle Grand Prix at Sepang yesterday.
It was drizzling heavily and fellow Spaniard rival Jorge Lorenzo, on a Yamaha, started from pole but was unable to shake off Pedrosa and powerless to respond when his Honda rival made his move after nine laps.
Pedrosa eased away after that as an upset Lorenzo appeared agitated as the organisers refused to bring the race to a halt as conditions turned dangerous.
The MotoGP world championship leader gestured several times to marshals while he was hounded by reigning world champion Casey Stoner, who eventually brought his Honda bike home in third place.
To Lorenzo’s relief, the red flags flew almost immediately after as the rain set in with six laps to go and the visibility decreased.
There was a long delay while the organisers discussed whether to restart the race and decided finally to abandoned it due to the terrible conditions.
The win was awarded to Pedrosa and put him within 23 points of title rival Lorenzo with 50 points up for grabs in the final two races in Australia and Spain.
Pedrosa, who also won in similar fashion in Spain and Japan before arriving here, is also the first Spanish rider to win in the premier class in Sepang and was delighted to bag his sixth of the season in wet conditions.
“This victory is really amazing for me, it’s the first time I’ve won in the wet and I’m really, really happy.
“I want to thank my team and the people who helped me to get here because when I started racing in these conditions, I was weak and they know how difficult it’s been during all this time.
“Jorge set a really high pace at the beginning of the race and I remained calm to stay with him. I knew he was on a soft rear tyre and he could pull out some good laps at the start. Lap by lap I got a little more confident and I could still push and at half way in the race I overtook him and built a good gap.
“Some laps later the rain came down and it was hard to stay on the bike. I was lucky to be able to win this race, and also Jorge to finish second because he was almost on the ground,” said Pedrosa.
Lorenzo was relieved the race was called off eventually.
“If we were riding at 20km per hour, it is easy to stay on the bike but it is very difficult to find the limit in these conditions. They made the right decision to stop the race. For us it was great because we might otherwise have finished on the ground and crashed.
“We used the soft rear where Dani and Casey used the harder one. When the conditions were ok, they used less of the centre of the tyre so when the conditions became worse they had more to play with,” said Lorenzo, who has started on pole and come home second in the sixth consecutive occasion.
Ducati ended fourth and fifth, courtesy of former world champions Nicky Hayden and Valentino Rossi. The Italian had run fourth early on but dropped back to ninth and had to fight his way back up the order.
His task was made easier by a spate of crashes. Yamaha rider Ben Spies was the earliest to fall down, suffering a heavy high-side on lap eight and Andrea Dovizioso crashed one lap later while chasing Stoner.
His Tech 3team-mate Cal Crutchlow also exited when he lost the front under braking while Randy de Puniet followed suit moments later as his bike flipped into the gravel.
The event this year attracted the best ever attendance of 77,178 for race day.