Factory Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo has taken his first ever MotoGP win at the Losail circuit this evening, passing reigning champion Casey Stoner with four laps to go and promptly clearing off, leaving fellow Spaniard Dani Pedrosa to take second ahead of his Repsol Honda team-mate while Britain's Cal Crutchlow equalled his best-ever result in fourth.
Stoner had put a two-second gap into his title rivals but the pair clawed him back as the lap clicked down. Lorenzo was third behind Pedrosa but stole second and then went underneath Stoner, who hadn't done a race distance in testing, on the same lap, finishing eight-tenths ahead and the Aussie looked in pain as he got off his RC213V.
Ducati's Valentino Rossi came home in tenth and more than 33 seconds behind Lorenzo but it was left to Ben Spies to cross the line as the last prototype, one place behind The Doctor and very nearly swallowed up by leading CRT man Colin Edwards who was catching his fellow Texan and former team-mate at the rate of two seconds a lap at the end.
Crutchlow was involved in a race-long battle with team-mate Andrea Dovizioso and shadowed the former HRC man until lap 17 when he went passed for fourth, managing to keep the more experienced rider behind him and winning out by just three-tenths of a second.
Ducati's Nicky Hayden took sixth place but had a moment mid-race and had to fight his way back past Alvaro Bautista and Stefan Bradl, who was riding in his first-ever MotoGP race. Hector Barbera, on the satellite Pramac Ducati, was two seconds ahead of Rossi as he took the chequered flag.
Randy De Puniet was the second CRT bike home while Britain's James Ellison recovered from an off-track excursion to end the race in 18th place.
