Dani Pedrosa got his seventh podium finish of the season in the Malaysian GP after finishing third in what was expected to be a complicated race for him. In spite of getting the pole Pedrosa and his team have had many problems with the tyres over the whole weekend. The race strategy was to maintain a fast pace from the start so as to get away from the rest of the riders and then to stay at the front until the end of the race.
At the end of the first lap Dani Pedrosa was second behind Stoner. These two had got away from the rest of the field together with De Puniet and Melandri. The Repsol Honda Team rider tried to keep up with Stoner´s pace but little by little the Australian opened up a gap of about a second, meanwhile Dani was overtaken by Melandri. Pedrosa stayed in third position for the rest of the race, with De Puniet just behind him but trying to get closer to Melandri on each lap, something that in the end he was not able to do, and he had to make do with third position.
The American rider Nicky Hayden did not have an easy race today in Malaysia. He started in 6th position, but Hayden was in tenth place at the end of the first lap. After overtaking a few riders Hayden was fighting for sixth position with Toni Elías, but on lap 12 when he braked on the final curve before the home straight he was not able to take it cleanly and went off the track into the sand. He got back on the track without any problems but in the end the Repsol rider was 9th.
Tomorrow Monday 22nd the two Repsol Honda Team riders will be out on this same track to do some tests and to prepare the final race of the season, the Comunidad Valenciana Grand Prix in two weeks.In 250cc, the Repsol rider Julián Simón finished in a deserving 6th position, just a little over 8 seconds behind the winner Hiroshi Aoyama, from Japan.
Simón, who started on the second row with the eighth best time started in sixth place but dropped down to ninth at the end of the first lap after a having few frights. Later he grazed Simoncelli`s bike and this made him lose touch with the leading group, although bit by bit Alberto Puig`s pupil cut the gap on and caught up with De Angelis, Barberá, Hiroshi Aoyama and Kallio who were fighting for third position. Dovizioso was in the lead and trying to get away from Lorenzo who was following him closely.
As the race progressed the chasing group got closer to the leaders. But De Angelis fell in front of Simón and made him lose contact with the group and so he was out of the running for the victory and podium. His teammate Shuhei Aoyama finished in 13th position to round off a depressing weekend for the Japanese Repsol Honda Team 250cc rider.
In 125cc Bradley Smith and Esteve Rabat had a tough race and finished 9th and 15th respectively. At the start the British Repsol Honda Team 125 rider moved up to eighth whilst Esteve Rabat crossed the finishing line for the first time in sixteenth place.
From then on the Repsol riders tried hard to improve their positions, but Smith was overtaken by all the riders in the chasing group and had to join the chasing group, riding in thirteenth position. But at the end of the race he was the leader of the second group, in 9th position. Esteve Rabat on the other hand had to make do with just a single point after moving up a couple of places towards the end of the race.
