MISANO (Italy): Italian motorcycling maestro Valentino Rossi extended his lead in the MotoGp standings yesterday as he easily beat teammate and championship rival Jorge Lorenzo to take the San Marino race.
The 30-year-old eight-times world champion -- who had admitted over the weekend to holding talks with Ferrari about driving for them in next weekend's Formula One Italian Grand Prix before deciding against taking up the offer -- had been pinned back by Lorenzo when the Spaniard won last weekend's US MotoGp.
However, with victory yesterday his lead is 30 points -- 237 to 207 -- while another Spaniard Dani Pedrosa, who was third here, moves into third place overall on 157 points ahead of Australian Casey Stoner, who is absent because of a mystery virus which has plagued him all season.
Rossi, who has also revealed that things are not totally happy within the stable but will see out his contract which ends at the end of next season, confessed that all had not been too good at the beginning.
Yamaha's Valentino Rossi has extended his lead to 30 points.
Yamaha's Valentino Rossi has extended his lead to 30 points.
"It wasn't easy at the beginning and I was in trouble after a bad start," said Rossi, who had begun on pole.
"However, it was in the end the perfect weekend."
Lorenzo admitted that he had not been up to the level of the Italian.
"I put in as much effort as I possibly could especially when I overtook Dani (Pedrosa).
"However, Valentino was clearly the number one this weekend."
Pedrosa was extremely fortunate to even finish the race as he ran out of fuel on the wind down lap after taking the chequered flag.
"Maybe I had a problem for something like that to happen," he said.
"Lorenzo and Rossi were just too fast for me on the corners, but hopefully I will have more fortune next time."
With 23 laps remaining Lorenzo was right on Rossi's tail with Pedrosa leading, but the irrepressible Italian gave himself some breathing space as he overtook Pedrosa two laps later.
Lorenzo was having a devil of a time to get past his compatriot Pedrosa and try to get at his Yamaha team-mate, who with 16 laps to go held a lead of nearly two seconds over the pursuing pair.
Lorenzo finally passed Pedrosa with 15 laps remaining and desperately tried to claw back the gap between himself and Rossi while Pedrosa looked safe in third as he had an eight-second advantage over Andrea Dovizioso.
However, Lorenzo, who had been really disappointed by his performance in qualifying, was unable to make any inroads into Rossi's lead and the Italian had opened up a gap of well over two seconds with just eight laps remaining.
Veteran Loris Capirossi performed a brilliant overtaking of Dovizioso with just four laps to go to reconfirm his Suzuki team's decision to offer him a new contract -- though Dovizioso was to regain fourth spot in another dramatic overtaking manoeuvre on the final lap.
The early part of the race had seen a spectacular collision between Nicky Hayden and home hope Alex de Angelis -- third and second respectively in the United States last weekend -- with the American venting his spleen at the San Marino rider and having to be separated by a race steward.
Earlier, Aprilia had dominated the other categories with 1-2-3 cleansweeps in both.
Hector Berbera of Spain won the 250cc Grand Prix, leading home teammates Italien Mattia Pasini and another Spaniard, Alvaro Bautista.
Julian Simon of Spain won the 125cc Grand Prix in seeing off compatriot Nicolas Terol and Britain's Bradley Smith. -- AFP
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