Lorenzo takes seventh victory at Brno

 

 

Jorge Lorenzo has extended his MotoGP title lead to 77 points, over three race wins, after claiming his seventh victory from ten starts in Sunday's Czech Republic Grand Prix at Brno.

 

Jorge Lorenzo delivered an inch-perfect performance to record his seventh victory of the MotoGP season in the Czech Grand Prix on Sunday.

The 23-year-old Spaniard now holds a 77-point lead over his nearest title-rival Dani Pedrosa - who finished second. That means Lorenzo now holds an advantage of three entire race wins, with just eight rounds of the MotoGP world championship left to run.

 

With typical panache, Lorenzo forced his way into the lead with a brave move that saw him pass the fast-starting Pedrosa and Ben Spies at the same time into Turn 3.

 

From that point on, he never looked back.

And while that brief kerfuffle saw Pedrosa slip behind Spies, it wasn't long before the Honda was back on the tail of Lorenzo. The Majorcan put up with this pursuit until around lap 10, before thumping in a series of flying laps that saw the gap extended by 4s.

 

By lap 15 (of 22), the fight at the front was over, and Lorenzo was clear to take yet another dominant victory. He has still not finished lower than second this season.

 

Casey Stoner eventually finished a distant third having caught and passed Spies before half distance. Behind that pair Valentino Rossi recover from a poor getaway to finish fifth, 18s behind his team-mate and third of the four Yamaha riders.

 

Rossi was assisted in this battle by Andrea Dovizioso crashing out of fifth on the second factory Honda. The Italian was annoyed at himself afterwards, having ended up prone in the middle of the track. Indeed he was lucky to have escaped unscathed as the field swept left and right of him.

Nicky Hayden rode bravely to sixth, despite having chipped his left radius bone less than 24 hours prior to the race, though the Ducati man had no chance of hanging on to Rossi.

 

Colin Edwards finished a lonely seventh ahead of Marco Melandri who came out on top of an enthralling battle between himself, Hector Barbera and MM's Gresini team-mate Marco Simoncelli in the final laps. In fact such was the intensity of the scrap, that even the hobbled Randy de Puniet got involved - stealing 10th from Simoncelli in the process.

 

There was misfortune for Suzuki with both Loris Capirossi and the injured Alvaro Bautista crashing out. The Spaniard fell on the last lap, having grimaced throughout with a back injury picked up in practice. 

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