Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa took an important second position in the Grand Prix of Italy, but teammate Casey Stoner could only manage 8th in a warm race at Mugello circuit.
Pedrosa made a good start but was unable to hold off Lorenzo who led every lap from of the race, Dani - who set a new fastest race lap (1'47.705 on lap 10) kept within reach of the leader but in the end found himself in a race alone, after Lorenzo opened up a gap of 5 seconds and Dovizioso was a further 5 seconds behind.
Stoner, starting from 5th on the grid, lost a few spots on the first corner but gradually made his way up to 5th by lap 9. Then a mistake on lap 10 saw him run on at the 'Correntaio' turn, which dropped him down to 10th but he fought back to pass Barberá and Bautista to finish 8th.
Dani Pedrosa
"I braked late at the first corner but I missed something and Jorge was already there. Then a few corners later I was surprised by Dovizioso, he passed me also and it took a few laps for me to make the overtake on him as he was very strong in the first corner so I had to pass him in another part of the circuit. By this point Jorge had already opened up a small gap but I tried to get back in my rhythm and I started to lap in the 1'47's. When I started to drop into these times though, my tyre began to spin a lot in the rear and I got some chatter so I was worried for the tyre. At this point I decided to slow down a little because to catch Jorge meant laps in 1'47's. He was riding very strong so I have to congratulate him, finally for me a second place is a good result overall and I want to thank all the team for their hard work this weekend."
Casey Stoner
"It's definitely not the way we planned it, we thought today we could be fighting for the podium and maybe have the pace to stay with Dani. Jorge has ridden fantastically all weekend and hasn't really put a foot wrong but I think a third position would have been good today. However, we just couldn't get the bike working. During our last attempts in warm up we couldn't get anything to work, we weren't very happy with the bike today and I just didn't feel comfortable. I made a mistake in the race, I had a bit of a shake exiting turn 11 and when I arrived at turn 12 I had no brakes, I was squeezing them as hard as I could and thought I had enough brake power to stop before the edge of the track but I had too much momentum and had to ride through the gravel trap which wasted a lot of time. I'm sorry for the incident with Álvaro, I went to make the pass into turn 2 and he started to close my front off and I couldn't do anything."
Repsol Honda Team Press Release
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