Repsol rider claims second win of the season and moves to within 18 points of series lead. Casey Stoner overcomes injuries to place fourth.
Dani Pedrosa rounded off a perfect weekend at the Indianapolis Grand Prix with victory from pole position. The win was his second of the season and a great show for the American fans. Special mention must also go to Casey Stoner, who finished fourth and was closet o the podium —despite suffering a fracture and sprain to his right ankle in a qualifying crash yesterday.
The Spanish Repsol rider got off to a good start when the lights went out, but was overtaken on the second corner by Ben Spies. Keeping his cool, Pedrosa stick to the home rider’s rear wheel and made a first attempt to get back in front on lap three. Although that move was unsuccessful, on lap four he finally got through with a display of speed on the Indianapolis straight, then took off in pursuit of his second Indy win. He crossed the line over ten seconds ahead of his closest rival, Jorge Lorenzo, and claimed win number two of 2012.
Repsol Honda teammate Casey Stoner began the race from sixth place after Messing the majority of qualifying, courtesy of a crash yesterday in which he picked up a fracture and sprain to his right ankle. The reigning World Champion received a painkilling shot before the race and lost two places on the opening corners, but was able to make back one of them before the end of lap one.
Fighting with Andrea Dovizioso, Álvaro Bautista and Stefan Bradl, the Repsol rider made it into the podium positions when second-placed Ben Spies suffered an engine failure to his Yamaha. In the end he finished fourth, taking 13 points and moving his tally up to 186. He is currently third in the standings. Pedrosa holds 207 points and leader Jorge Lorenzo, 225.
With barely a moment’s rest, the World Championship moves to the Czech Republic for next weekend’s Grand Prix.
Dani Pedrosa >> Audio
1st – 46:39.631
“I’m extremely happy with this win and I really want to congratulate the whole team for the great job they’ve done this weekend, the bike worked perfectly. It was difficult at the beginning of the race because the pace was very strong from the start. I got past Ben Spies, but I kept calm because I knew I had the pace today to fight for the victory. When I took the lead, I put in some very strong laps to build up a gap and then I made a mistake in turn 2 going into neutral and Jorge reduced the gap by 1 second. But I was able to get back on my pace and ride comfortably to the end, where I think Jorge struggled a little with the soft rear tyre. We managed to take our second win of the season and every point is important. I want to also congratulate Casey for his result; he did a superb race in his condition and I am sure he will be strong again in Brno”.
Casey Stoner
4th at 19.803 sec.
“I’m definitely disappointed with how the weekend went. We had a strong start on Friday morning and then had a few issues Friday afternoon in FP2. We showed that we certainly had the pace for pole position and fight for the win but unfortunately I had a huge crash in qualifying. The injuries I sustained from the crash made things very difficult for us and we lost precious track time to work on the set up. This morning in warm up I was just getting comfortable on the bike and trying to get a feel for everything rather than working on set up. The race was equally as difficult, we had a rough start and got pushed back some positions and had to fight our way back through. As soon as we did, unluckily Ben had a bike failure and I found myself in the middle of the smoke, unsure where I was going and what I might hit and we lost positions again. At the end of the race it was almost impossible to maintain the pace. The painkillers I took to dull the pain gradually wore off at around the half way point and as I was compensating for my injury with the other side of my body, I simply had no energy left. It was frustrating to give up the podium position to Andrea but we did everything we could and at least I was able to ride and take some points”
