MotoGP: Rossi Dominates in Spain

The Yamaha team showed that the bike and riders are still the quickest around on Sunday in Spain. Valentino Rossi dominated the race from start to finish, with team mate Colin Edwards coming in third.

Dani Pedrosa managed to be "the best of the rest," finishing his Honda RC212V second.

It all looked too easy for Rossi though — he managed the gap to Pedrosa well, kept his tyres in better condition than anyone else, and even had enough time in his pocket to back off on the last three laps.

Pedrosa, on the other hand, struggled to keep up with the Italian seven-time title winner. He looked ragged and close to crashing at points. His tyres showed a lot more wear after the race than either of the Yamahas.

The race started with Pedrosa on pole, and Rossi in the second spot. Rossi had the launch off the line, and managed to get into the first corner in the lead position.

Pedrosa managed to stay with Rossi for the first ten laps, even looking to challenge for the lead at times. However it was Rossi that looked after his tyres, and after the first half of the race started to struggle in maintaining the gap to Rossi. So much in fact that Edwards started to make inroads into Pedrosa.

The status quo was held, and the top three was Rossi, Pedrosa and Edwards.

If the front of the pack sounded boring, it certainly was not further down the pack. The current world champion Nicky Hayden made moves up the grid after a poor qualifying, and was running in fourth place. The climb used his tyres up early however, and towards the end of the race started to slip back. It seems he struggled to come to terms with the new 800cc bikes.

Article Author: Ashleigh Charlesworth

Ashleigh currently writes for Naked Cleaner and F1 Blog. His interest lie in Technology (of all forms) and engineering. Day to day he does network security for living (yes I AM that nerdy).

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