Henny Ray Abrams | July 2, 2010
MONTEREY, CA, JULY 25 – Fiat Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo tightened his grip on the MotoGP World Championship with a runaway victory before a crowd of over 51,000 in the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix on a warm and sunny day at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.The Spaniard moved into second with a pass of Casey Stoner (Ducati Marlboro) on the sixth lap, then set sail for race leader Dani Pedrosa.Lorenzo kept the heat on and when Pedrosa (Repsol Honda) went into the turn five left-hander on the 12th of 32 laps, his front end slid away. That put Lorenzo into a lead he wouldn’t relinquish.With metronomic precision he continued to lay down the fast laps, winning the race by 3.517 secs.With Lorenzo’s sixth win, to go with two seconds, he takes a whopping 72 point lead over Pedrosa as the series heads into the summer break after nine of 18 races.Stoner was a solid second and nearly ten seconds clear of third, which was one of the better battles of the day.It came down a dual of Italians, Andrea Dovizioso (Repsol Honda) vs. Valentino Rossi (Fiat Yamaha) and it went to Rossi. Seven weeks after breaking his right leg at Mugello, Rossi was back on the podium for the first time since the French GP at Le Mans.Dovi fought to the end, almost to his detriment. He made a mistake in the final corner and nearly lost fourth to Nicky Hayden (Ducati Marlboro). Hayden took top American honors well clear of Ben Spies (Monster Yamaha Tech 3).Spies had been in fourth on the fourth lap before a mistake let three others by. He gathered himself up and increased his pace in the second half, at one point looking like he was going to catch back up to fourth, before running wide in turn 11. That decided his position, which would be sixth.Teammate Colin Edwards was seventh after battling the San Carlo Gresini Hondas for much of the 32 laps. Marco Simoncelli crashed out of his first appearance at Laguna Seca and Marco Melandri faded to a lonely eighth.Pramac Racing Ducati’s Mika Kallio took ninth from Rizla Suzuki’s Loris Capirossi in a photo finish.Roger Lee Hayden finished an ecstatic 11th on the LCR Honda. Hayden started slowly, wanting to warm up the tires properly, before getting into a battle with the second Pramac Ducati of Aleix Espargaro and Alex de Angelis, a fellow replacement rider over at Interwetten Honda MotoGP.Hayden battled de Angelis to the very end, rebuffing a final lap strike to take 11th and earn valuable team points for LCR.There were two other non-finishers. Spaniards Hector Barbera (Paginas Amarillas Aspar) and Alvaro Bautista (Rizla Suzuki), both of whom were at Laguna for the first time, crashed out.
Results:
1 Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha)
2. Casey Stoner (Ducati)
3. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha)
4. Andrea Dovizioso (Honda)
5. Nicky Hayden (Ducati)
6. Ben Spies (Yamaha)
7. Colin Edwards (Yamaha)
8. Marco Melandri (Honda)
9. Loris Capirossi (Suzuki)
10. Mika Kallio (Ducati)
11. Roger Lee Hayden (Honda)
12. Alex de Angelis (Honda)
Henny Ray Abrams | Contributing Editor
Abrams is the longest-serving contributor at Cycle News. Over the course of his 35-some years of writing and shooting photos, he’s covered events from MotoGP to the Motocross World Championship - and everything in between.
