Valentino Rossi had to battle hard, but ultimately pulled off a famous win at Jerez to see off the competition from the local heroes and give his championship prospects a huge boost at this early stage of the season.
Rossi got a reasonable start for once (meaning that he didn’t lose multiple positions and get swallowed up by the pack, as seems to happen to him quite often). He started in 4th and held position, while ahead of him his team mate Jorge Lorenzo starting from pole had a disappointing getaway, allowing Dani Pedrosa to get one of his trademark fliers and Casey Stoner to follow him through into second into the first turn.
In fact, Lorenzo – so peerless in qualifying yesterday – was simply lacking for much of the race itself. As Pedrosa and Stoner started to stretch out a big gap, Lorenzo was simply holding up Rossi from going after tham – and on lap 2, Rossi put that to rights and dispatched the Spaniard once and for all. Once past, Rossi rapidly pulled away from Lorenzo who seemed to be strangely off the pace.
Rossi still had a formidable job ahead of him, as Pedrosa and Stoner had pulled out a long gap already. It took Rossi another five laps to catch the Aussie, and he finally got past him for second place on lap 7 after which Stoner quickly dropped off the world champion’s pace.
Rossi now hunted down Pedrosa, shaving off a tenth here, two tenths there to gradually work his way right up tot he back of the Honda. Getting past was another matter, and it took Rossi a couple of goes before he finally made the pass stick at the back hairpin on lap 16. But once it was done, Pedrosa had nothing to come back…

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