Stoner wins the Laguna Seca US Grand Prix

The young pretender is all set to be the King. Casey Stoner dominated the US Grand Prix taking his form from qualifying to record his 6th Moto GP win of the season increasing his championship lead over Valentino Rossi from 34 to 44 points.

Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden of Repsol Honda and John Hopkins of Suzuki overtook Stoner on the 1st corner but Hayden and Hopkins ran wide and collided while trying to cut back in, sending Hopkins out of the race and losing Hayden valuable time and retired with 10 laps remaining while Hopkins eventually finished 15th.

Chris Vermeulen on a Suzuki who shared the front row with Stoner, stuck his Suzuki down the track and finished 2nd on the podium [And being rewarded for the same by the 2008 contract with Suzuki]. Rossi ran 4th in the early stages was passed on by Marco Melandri, who turned in his best ride of the season just 24 hours after his crash during qualifying to finish 3rd, who in turn signed in with Ducati to ride with Stoner for 2008-09.

Rossi finished 4th followed by Pedrosa, the last GP race winner finishing 5th with Roger Lee Hayden [Nicky’s brother] on a Kawasaki finishing 10th on his MotoGP debut.

European GP: Alonso has the last laugh

Alonso, thanks to the rain God, took full advantage of a late rain shower to oust Felipe Massa and claim his third victory of the season. The race was action packed and full of extraordinary scenes at the early stage of the race when six drivers - including Hamilton, whose World Championship lead has been cut to a paltry two points - crashed out within thirty seconds when the Nurburgring was hit by a virtual monsoon. Incredibly, the race then re-started twenty minutes later in near perfect conditions before a late shower produced a final twist and enabled Alonso to pass Massa with the McLaren and Ferrari cars banging wheels.

It was a memorable race for Markus Winkelhock the local hero in his first race as he took the pole positon on restart because Spyker had taken a remarkable gamble and started him on intermediate tyres. He was overtaken by Massa, Alonso & Co., and eventually retired ‘cuz of his Spyker Ferrari engine giving away.

Kimi’s bad luck continued as he was forced to retire from a certain podium position on track, as his Ferrari engine gave him problems by intermittently cutting out. Kimi crawled back to the pits on Lap 35 and finally coming to rest at the side of the pitlane.

Mark Webber [Red Bull] finished third in a thrilling finish as he lost control going into the Schumacher-S on the final lap of the race, under extreme pressure from Alex Wurz. He just about managed to get it back together again and scrambled through the final corner with Wurz on his gearbox to receive an ecstatic welcome from his mechanics on the pitwall.

Overall it was an extraordinary race with good fortune and bad fortune for many of the front runners [only 13 out of the 22 finally could finish the race], but finally Fernando Alonso had got some good fortune and should be thanking the rain Gods for it, for if the 2nd rain showers would have taken another 20 odd mins to hit the tarmac, it would have been another story with Massa thanking them for the delay.

Going forward to the next race at Hungry on 5th August, Ferrari will have their work cut out as summed up nicely by Kimi in the post race interview “We have a very competitive car but clearly we have to improve on the reliability front."

Dani Pedrosa dominates Sachsenring MotoGP Deutschland

Dani Pedrosa finally earned a long deserving victory for Honda in 2007. Pedrosa had fantastic start from second place on the grid, leading throughout the race, maintaining a quick pace that proved too high for competitors to catch and finishing the race ~13 seconds ahead of Loris Capirossi, the old warrior on a Ducati who rode at a steady pace to finish second on the podium. Nicky Hayden, who took the third podium spot, making great comeback from 14th on the grid, completed HRC Repsol Honda success.
 
Colin Edwards provided some consolation to Yamaha finishing 4th after making a comeback from a distant 13th grid position as the more prolific Rossi crashed in lap 5, while trying to overtake Randy de Puniet for 6th place. Rossi will be under tremendous pressure as the MotoGP moves to Laguna Seca, where Rossi does not have a history of great results in the past.

Casey Stoner missed chance to make maximum of Valentino Rossi retirement as he finished race in 5th place, extending championship lead to 32 points followed by Marco Melandri, who looked strong in first part of the race.