Movistar Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo has taken his third MotoGP title today at Valencia with a lights-to-flag victory in front of his home crowd, hanging on to top spot by the skin of his teeth after a late charge from both Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa while Valentino Rossi came home in fourth from a back-of-the-grid start.
Lorenzo didn’t put a wheel wrong for the entire 30 laps even though Marquez was harrying him. Pedrosa reeled in a gap of more than two seconds with seven laps to go, lapping half a second quicker than the leading pair and looked to have the pace for a win but as he tried to pass Repsol team-mate Marquez on the penultimate lap, the youngster wasn’t having any of it and a two-corner scrap gave Lorenzo the gap he needed to win.
Rossi put in an immaculate ride slicing through the field to get to fourth but he used his tyres and just didn’t have the pace to close down the podium men. He needed both Hondas to finish ahead of Lorenzo in order to take a tenth-title but the cards just didn’t fall his way.
Away from the line, The Doctor was 16th into turn one and then grabbed another place one lap one. On lap two, Rossi passed Nicky Hayden, Yonny Hernadez and Alvaro Bautista to get to twelfth before going under Stefan Bradl and Michele Pirro to break into the top ten. A crash from Andrea Iannone moved Rossi into ninth as Lorenzo set two laps records one after another.
On lap six, Rossi came onto the back of fellow Yamaha rider Bradley Smith who didn’t make it easy for his works stablemate but Rossi went past him for eighth, Danilo Petrucci left him half a mile of space for seventh, then Rossi set off after the Espargaro brothers. He passed Pol, on the second Monster Yamaha, on lap nine and the Aleix a lap later for fifth place. It was only then Andrea Dovizioso to go for fourth place, which Rossi took on lap 12.
Rossi’s championship hopes were then in the hands of the Hondas as he had an 11-second gap to Pedrosa but was half a second slower. Pol Espargaro managed to squeeze ahead of Smith for fifth place but the British rider bagged sixth place in the championship, top satellite rider and leading Brit. Dovizioso kept his nose in front of Aleix Espargaro who finished one place ahead of Cal Crutchlow. The LCR Honda man had to come from one place behind Rossi after bike trouble on the grid but he carved his way to ninth with Petrucci in tenth.
Scott Redding grabbed a point in his last race on the works Honda while Nicky Hayden finished second in the Open class in his last-ever MotoGP race. Eugene Laverty, who moves to Ducati machinery on Tuesday, retired early doors.
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