Repsol Honda's Casey Stoner cruised to victory this evening at the Indianapolis MotoGP round, crossing the line five seconds ahead of team-mate Dani Pedrosa while front-row man Ben Spies recovered from an awful start to take the final podium step.
Nine-times world champion Valentino Rossi slumped to 13th mid-race after an off-track excursion but fought back to tenth place, passing Britain's Cal Crutchlow, compatriot Marco Simoncelli and team-mate Nicky Hayden who all suffered tyre woes.
Pedrosa took the early initiative with Stoner in pursuit as Lorenzo and Simoncelli battled for third place but the Repsol bikes were too strong and soon stretched the advantage. Stoner took the lead from his team-mate on lap seven and didn't look back while the Spaniard had an equally lonely race for the second podium spot.
Spies, meanwhile, had scythed his way back to ninth after a feet-off-pegs and had problems passing on the tricky Indianapolis surface but made his way back into fourth with a pass on Simoncelli, who had passed and be re-passed by Lorenzo.
The Texan then set off after his team-mate at the rate of half a second a lap and more before going under the reigning world champion. He ran out of laps though and couldn't catch Pedrosa but with a good start, it would have been a different story.
The third Repsol bike of Andrea Dovizioso came in fifth with Rizla Suzuki's Alvaro Bautista a quite brilliant sixth. The Spaniard was nine seconds ahead of seventh placed man Colin Edwards. Randy De Puniet, Hiro Aoyama and Hector Barbera were all fighting for top ten slots until the Spaniard crashed on the last lap which gave tenth to Rossi.
