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Ducati Team
rider Casey Stoner unleashed a faultless display of
riding at Laguna Seca on Sunday afternoon to win his
sixth MotoGP victory of the year and extend his World
Championship lead to 44 points. The Australian grabbed
the lead after the first few corners of the first lap
and was never challenged from there, running away from
the pack to win by an emphatic 9.865 seconds. Sunday's
victory followed a similarly faultless two days of
practice and qualifying - Stoner topped all five
pre-race sessions aboard his awesome Desmosedici GP7.
Stoner's weekend-long domination also made him the first
rider to win a MotoGP race from pole position in 13
events. The last man to score pole and race victory was
Loris Capirossi on his Ducati at last September's
Japanese Grand Prix.
Capirossi was out of luck at Laguna. The Italian, who
finished second in last Sunday's German GP, had
qualified strongly on the second row of the grid but
withdrew form the US GP after the first few laps with a
technical fault. MotoGP now commences its traditional
summer recess with Ducati leading the riders',
constructors' and teams' World Championships. The sport
reconvenes at Brno for the Czech GP on August 17/18/19.
CASEY STONER, winner,
World Championship leader on 221 points
"This would have to be my best racing weekend ever. We
also had a great weekend at the Sachsenring last week,
it just didn't work out in the race. Today everything
was perfect, the tyres, the bike, everything was working
great the whole weekend. We managed to be fast in every
session and after all this hard work we did it in the
race. We also broke the long run of no pole sitter
winning a race - the last person to do it was on a
Ducati and the next person to do it was on a Ducati. I'm
absolutely stoked about this race. We went out in
morning warm-up and we were able to do really low 22s
and even high 21s with half race distance on the tyres,
so we felt pretty confident. At the start of the race I
dipped into the 22s, I wanted to see how fast everybody
else could go. I was pulling away from Dani [Pedrosa] by
about half second lap, then Chris [Vermeulen] got in
front of him and started to chase me down.
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The Australian grabbed the lead after the first few
corners of the first lap and was never challenged
from there, running away from the pack to win by an
emphatic 9.865 seconds. |
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Ducati Team rider Casey Stoner unleashed a faultless
display of riding at Laguna Seca on Sunday to win
his sixth MotoGP victory of the year and extend his
championship lead to 44 points. |
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"I thought he was obviously pushing a bit harder so I
decided to up my pace and I was slowly but surely pulling a
gap. Chris was very fast, but I feel like I had a little bit
better rear tyre, we had selected a pretty hard rear which
really started working towards the end, so I just continued
to push throughout the race. I didn't think there was going
to be a big group at the front, I knew we had the set-up and
it was just a matter of everything going to plan for us with
no bad luck and everything worked."
LORIS CAPIROSSI, DNF, 8th in World Championship on 77 points
"The weekend had been going very well, so I'm sad not to
finish the race. In morning warm-up we were faster than
yesterday so I was confident I could have a good race. Casey
and Chris were very fast but I believe I could have fought
for another podium finish. After a couple of laps the
gearbox stuck in second gear and that was that. It seems
like it was only a tiny little fault, but sometimes things
like that can happen in racing."
LIVIO SUPPO, Ducati MotoGP
project manager
"We are so happy for Casey today because once again he
dominated the weekend and today he got the victory he
deserved. He has been incredibly fast all weekend.
Bridgestone gave us fantastic tyres, but it was Casey who
made the difference today, he finished almost ten seconds
ahead of the next guy, who was also on Bridgestones. We are
very, very sorry for Loris. For sure he could have ridden
another great race, but he was stopped by a broken gear
lever return spring. Now we go into the summer break - it's
great for us to go into the break ahead in the three
championships, so we can relax a bit before coming back next
month. As always, a big thank you to our technical partners
Bridgestone and Shell Advance."
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