Marlboro Ducati's Casey Stoner breezed to the win this afternoon at Valencia's MotoGP round, crossing the line more than three seconds ahead of Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa.

Had Stoner not knocked off the throttle and wheelied across the line, the gap would have been more than five seconds in what is the most boring race of 2009.

Stoner, who is still riding with a broken scaphoid in his left wrist, led from turn two on lap one and then set about putting a gap between his Ducati and Pedrosa's Honda, which increased lap by lap until the final circuit.

Pedrosa got off the line fastest and into turn one in the lead with Stoner second and Tech3 Yamaha's Colin Edwards third. Stoner went past the Spaniard in turn two and promptly cleared off.

Nicky Hayden took a lap to get past compatriot Edwards and tried to set off in pursuit of the leaders while Fiat Yamaha's Valentino Rossi made his way past four riders to start lap three in sixth. He finished in third, taking his tally to 16 podiums from 18 races.

Rossi took Andrea Dovizioso and then led him past Edwards and Hayden. From there on, there were gaps all the way from down the field until the scrap for ninth.

Britain's James Toseland got an appalling start and was down to 12th by the end of lap one. He ended up scrapping with Jorge Lorenzo who pulled him up to the battle for ninth with Alex De Angelis and John Hopkins.

Lorenzo went past the group and eventually took Loris Capriossi's Rizla Suzuki for eighth. Toseland couldn't live with the pace and ended the race in 11th.

Marco Melandri charged through the field and managed to get himself up to 11th place in front of Toseland before making a mistake with a handful of laps to go and dropping back down to 16th.

Click here for results