Moto GP

The day clearly belonged to one driver and one driver only - Casey Stoner. The main Aussie of the Moto GP show silenced all his critics. Unusually for the 21 year old team Ducati rider he had a bad start. Slipping down the order to seventh position. This never seemed to phase the guy aptly described as "a genius" by his project manager Livio Suppo. Instead of tip-toeing around the drenched circuit and waiting for things to unfold ahead of him, Stoner went ahead and in the next 3 laps worked his way up to third place. By halfway through the race he'd passed the race leader Colin Edwards (who had led the race from pole position up to that point) and from there on in he never looked in the slightest discomfort with riding in the changing conditions, changing conditions because the track had started drying out to the point that a clear dry racing line had formed on the track.

Chris Vermeulen (are the Aussies taking over?) had to repay his team because he had crashed his bike 3 times over the weekend, so finishing 3rd was good enough for him. Having started way back in 12th position he had an excellent start and managed to pass Valentino Rossi in the closing stages of the race. Rossi brought his bike in to 4th place to at least keep the fight for the championship between himself and Stoner more than alive. Rossi had a difficult race firstly not having the pace of Casey Stoner and also tearing his tyres up in the latter half of the race due to the track drying out.

John Hopkins caught Rossi at the end but couldn't put in a decent passing move on the 7 times Donington winner so had to settle for 5th.

The rest of the top 10 finishers were Randy de Puniet on his Kawasaki in 6th, still recovering from his knee surgery. Alex Barros passed Dani Pedrosa for 7th place on the last lap of the race. Pedrosa started well on his Honda but slipped down the order and seemed a bit easy for the other riders to get past. Behind Dani Pedrosa were Alex Hoffman and Marco Melandri, with Melandri seeming to have made an incorrect tyre choice since he came to the party in the latter stages as the track dried out.

Source: http://www.zimbio.com/MotoGP/articles/WNKdykquodL/Moto+GP

Nicky Hayden James Haydon Dirk Heidolf Franz Heller John Hempleman Pat Hennen