Nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi has taken a fairytale MotoGP win in front of his home crowd at Misano this afternoon, romping to a 1.5s victory as Marc Marquez crashed with 19 laps to go.
It is Rossi’s first podium top spot since Assen last year and his first in Italy since 2009. It also means the Movistar Yamaha man has gone past the 5000 career Grand Prix points marker.
Rossi had got past both Marquez and team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, after swapping paint with the Repsol Honda man three times, and the reigning champion was giving chase but, like Brno, was struggling to hit apexes. Lorenzo chose the harder-option front tyre but didn't have the grip to challenge Rossi for the win.
As Rossi got the hammer down, Marquez lost the front trail-braking and The Doctor was never challenged again. The crowd, as you can expect, went absolutely bananas.
This weekend, Rossi is wearing a ‘helping hands’ paint job on his AGV which has hand-prints of 18 friends and crew, paw prints from his dogs and cat, and lips from his girlfriend and mother:
“Sincerely, all the hands of my team and people that are working and we know for try to win here we need a hand and to win is fantastic. The victory is the first of the season and to make it in front of all the crowd is something special.”
Marquez did re-mount and finished in race in 15th place. His laptimes as he went past Broc Parkes and Hector Barbera were the same as team-mate Dani Pedrosa in third place but his crash put him too far down the order to rescue a big points score.
Pedrosa again got mired down in the early laps and had a race-long scrap with Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso for the final podium space, taking it by three-quarters of a second but his lead over Rossi in the points table for second place is only now a single point.
Andrea Iannone, who started from the middle of the front row, slipped back to fifth place but it is still a great result for a satellite Ducati and he was in front of the factory-spec Monster Yamahas of Pol Espargaro and Bradley Smith, who will both wonder from where the Movistar bikes got their pace this weekend.
Cal Crutchlow was challenging Alvaro Bautista but ran on under braking which allowed the Spaniard to escape. The pair were fighting for ninth place but a late crash by Aleix Esaprgaro promoted them both inside the top ten with Yonny Hernandez completing it.
Scott Redding made an error in the early laps and dropped to 19th. He then had to claw his way back through the field but didn’t have enough pace to catch Hiro Aoyama or Karel Abraham, who ended in 12th and 11th respectively with Redding one place further behind.
Leon Camier also had a bobble in the first laps and ended the race in 16th place being pushed out of a point score by Marquez. Michael Laverty rode a blinder and was only six seconds behind Camier in 17th.
