Valencia GP. Races

Valencia draws the line under the 2004 season
Finale without podium places for the Repsol riders. Nieto and Gadea finish 4th and 5th in the 125cc. Nieto is 6th and Porto crashed in the 250cc. Barros is 6th and Hayden crashed.
 Cheste set the full stop to an exciting season with three excellent races staged in front of 122,000 spectators who filled the grandstands at the circuit in Valencia. A GP held under splendid sunshine but with no Repsol rider sharing a place on the podium with the winners of the day, Héctor Barberá, Dani Pedrosa and Valentino Rossi. The best classified Repsol riders today were Pablo Nieto and Sergio Gadea, 4th and 5th in a spectacular 125 race with Spanish riders playing the leading role and covering the six top places during some moments of the race. Sergio Gadea was one of the most outstanding riders during the first half of the race, lapping among the top riders, while a bad start forced Pablo Nieto to regain positions. The race was marked by several crashes and even a spectacular off-track by World Champion Andrea Dovizioso. Barberá took the lead in lap four and ten laps before the end the final positions were consolidated. Barberá escaped from the pack and crossed the finish line in first position with Nieto fourth and Gadea fifth, very close to a podium finish. Gadea has however been rewarded with the best race of his life thus becoming runner-up in the 125cc Rookie of the Year award. Less emotion in the 250cc race which had unquestionable protagonists in Dani Pedrosa, World Champion of the class and Sebastián Porto, runner-up. They both started from the front row with the fastest and second fastest qualifying time and left their rivals behind from the very start. A perfect start of the Repsol rider allowed him to lead the race during the first ten laps. Both riders were dosing their efforts until Pedrosa took over the lead in lap ten. At that time, Porto was saving forces in order to try to fight to regain the leadership. But a failure in the gearbox made him crash on lap nineteen forcing him to retire from the race. Fonsi Nieto, who finished seventh, moved up to the sixth place after the disqualification of Aoyama. Alex Barros was sixth after a very interesting MotoGP race where Nicky Hayden played a leading role. The North American rider, lapped among the top riders from the start and was fighting for a place on the podium against Tamada, Bayliss and Biaggi, but he went off-track and was unable to rejoin a race in which he probably would have managed to get an excellent result.