Fiat Yamaha's Valentino Rossi has repayed the favour to his team-mate Jorge Lorenzo by stealing the MotoGP win at Catalunya this afternoon in the Spaniard's back yard.
Lorenzo won the last round at Rossi's home track of Mugello and now the pair, plus Casey Stoner, and now tied for the lead in the MotoGP World Championship.
In what was one of the most exciting final laps in history, Rossi nicked the win by less than a tenth of a second from the Barcelona resident after they swapped places three times on the final circuit.
Until then, the race was a fairly interest-free affair with the identical YZR-M1s slowly pulling away from the Marlboro Ducati of Stoner who was very nearly caught for third on the final lap by Repsol Honda's Andrea Dovizioso.
On the 13th lap, Rossi allowed Lorenzo to go past so he could see where the Spaniard was weak and followed him around for ten laps before re-taking the lead down the start/finish straight.
A lap later, Lorenzo tried to pass Rossi in the same place was but the Italian was impossibly-late on the brakes and struggled to get the bike turned but just pulled in back in front of Lorenzo.
On the final lap, Lorenzo had to go across the pitlane exit in order to have a the line to outbrake his team-mate and push him wide into turn one. They then swapped places back through turn one and Rossi shadowed Lorenzo right until the final corner when he snuck underneath, squared the corner and crossed the line 0.095s in front.
Stoner's lead over Dovizioso was even closer at 0.052 while a resurgent Loris Capirossi took fifth place after going past Dani Pedrosa, who is riding full of painkillers, with nine laps to go.
Monster Yamaha's Colin Edwards headed Randy De Puniet, who was in the top four for the initial few laps, with Mika Kallio and Nicky Hayden rounding out the top ten.
Britain's James Toseland got an appalling start and was 16th at the end of the first lap but managed to claw his way back to 13th with MotoGP debut man Gabor Talmasci last.
