Fiat Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo is repaying the faith Yamaha has in him by not only crucifying the field in qualifying but cruising to an easy win in this afternoon’s MotoGP race in Estoril.
The Spaniard finished an easy two seconds in front of second-placed man Dani Pedrosa who could never get more closer than 1.6s to the man in front. Lorenzo’s team-mate Valentino completed the podium with s teady fourth after leading for a handful of laps at the start.
But the form of reigning world champion Casey Stoner continues to mystify as he left it until the last third of the race to find any pace whatsoever, running around in 11th place, and only began to pick up places with eight laps to go. Stoner looked to have lost his left-hand side bar grip assembly halfway through the race, which could explain his early tardiness.
He eventually caught and passed both James Toseland and Randy De Puniet to take sixth. Toseland and Frenchman De Puniet were involved in their own little battle, with the Honda man putting a desperate move on the hard-riding Brit with two laps remaining. De Puniet lost the front, however, a couple of corners later, promoting Toseland to a very creditable seventh.
Toseland’s team-mate Colin Edwards hada lonely ride for fourth place with Rizla Suzuki’s John Hopkins roounding out the top five. The race’s big loser was Andrea Dovizioso who was running fourth but crashed out with 13 laps to go.