Pedrosa Wins 2012 Finale, Stoner Third in His Last Race

Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC213V) scored a masterful victory in today’s Valencia grand finale, winning an incident-packed race that started on partially damp and very unforgiving track.

The Spanish hero was joined on the podium by third-placed Casey Stoner (Repsol Honda RC213V), riding his last race before retirement.

Alvaro Bautista (San Carlo Honda Gresini RC213V) finished fourth, some way in front of Michele Pirro (San Carlo Honda Gresini FTR-Honda) who rode a storming race on his CBR1000RR-powered CRT bike. That made it five Honda-powered machines in the top six.

Morning rain had left the slow-drying track still wet in places, despite the earlier Moto2 and Moto3 races, so there were plenty of deliberation about tyre choice before the start. Some riders chose slicks, others rain tyres. Pedrosa was one of several riders who started the warm-up lap on rain tyres, then decided to change, rushing into the pits and swapping to their slick-equipped spare bikes. According to the rules, Pedrosa started the race from pit lane, after the main pack, his RC213V fishtailing as he launched, its slick tyres struggling for grip on still-soaking pit road.

Pedrosa took care in the first few laps, working hard to get heat into his tyres and stay on the narrow dry line. At the end of lap one he was 20th, but by lap three he was up to 11th and the fastest man on the track, making good progress over rivals who had started on rain tyres.

However, Pedrosa was not the only man on slicks. Recently crowned World Champion Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) and a few others had started the race on slicks from the grid and it was not long before Lorenzo was in the lead. Pedrosa moved into second just before one-quarter distance and then began to whittle away his compatriot’s advantage. He had got the gap down to just one tenth of a second when he found a false neutral and ran off the track at turn ten which put him four seconds behind. The very next lap Lorenzo crashed at the same right-hander that had nearly claimed Pedrosa.

The vast majority of the eight crashes during the race round this anti-clockwise circuit where in right-handers, the riders struggling to get enough heat into the right side of their tyres.

When Lorenzo tumbled, Pedrosa inherited a 22 second lead over Yamaha rider Cal Crutchlow (who later crashed) and from then on his main challenges were maintaining concentration and staying on the narrow dry line. At the finish he was a gaping 37.6 seconds ahead of Katsuyuki Nakasuga (Yamaha), substituting for the injured Ben Spies. This was his seventh win of the year – a MotoGP record for the 27-year-old.

Stoner was one of the majority who started the race on rain tyres, the 2011 World Champion soon deciding he needed slicks and pitting at the end of lap four to change to his ‘dry’ bike. Next time around he was 16th and 31 seconds outside of a podium finish. His advance from that position was impressively determined as he passed other riders and made up a few more places as others fell by the wayside. He moved into third with two laps to go, giving him the opportunity to mark the end of his glittering career with a podium finish.

Nine years ago Stoner won his first GP victory – in the 125 class – here at Valencia. Today the Australian hangs up his leathers as one of the sport’s all time greats, with two MotoGP World Championships and 45 Grand Prix wins across all three classes.

The final victim of Stoner’s career was Bautista who nonetheless had good reason to be happy with his fourth-place finish. Like Pedrosa, Bautista also changed his mind about tyres during the warm-up lap, swapping bikes in pit lane and starting from there. He worked his way through from 19th on the first lap, riding well in the unforgiving conditions.meta:key MotoGP,Valencia,Spain,Racing,Honda,Dani-Pedrosa,Repsol,Grand-Prix,championship]