Casey Stoner shut out his rivals to ride a faultless race and claim his fourth consecutive Australian MotoGP at Phillip Island yesterday.
The Australian, who celebrated his 25th birthday by grabbing pole position on Saturday, was untouchable as he scorched to an 8.5-second victory on his Ducati over newly-crowned world champion Jorge Lorenzo.
The 2007 world champion is now just one win away from equalling Valentino Rossi’s five straight Australian MotoGP wins at Phillip Island from 2001 to 2005.
It was Stoner’s third win in his last four races and his 23rd in the MotoGP class.
During Stoner’s winning run at Phillip Island he led at the end of every lap except one.
While Lorenzo has already sealed this year’s championship, the battle intensified for the minor placings with Stoner leapfrogging Rossi into third place by eight points with two races left in the season.
Stoner roared off the pole and established a 1.5sec gap on Lorenzo in the opening lap and progressively built his lead over the remaining 26 laps to make it a one-act affair before his home fans.
“When I won it twice in a row and I was going for a third (last year) no-one was really expecting it, but this year they weren’t going to take any other result,” Stoner said.
“Every weekend, these last four especially, we’ve been trying to win and we’ve managed to win three out of the last four.”
While a misjudgement led to him crashing out in the early stages of the Malaysian Grand Prix the week before, things were working in his favour at Phillip Island, he said.
“This weekend everything’s gone so well for us. The fans were fantastic, but definitely before the race I was feeling a little bit of pressure, a little bit nervous – more than normal.
“I think maybe I need to have a few more nerves before other races because I didn’t seem to make a mistake the whole race,” he said.
Stoner completed the 120-kilometre race in 41 minutes 09.128 seconds with a fastest lap of 1:30.458.
While Stoner’s dominance made it an anti-climatic outcome, seven-time world MotoGP champion Rossi thrilled the crowd when he fought off Stoner’s American team-mate Nicky Hayden to take third.
Hayden made for a pulsating final lap when he slipped beneath Rossi to snatch third with three laps to go, only for the Italian great to reel him in with daredevil riding inside the last lap.
Rossi has 13 podium finishes out of 14 races in all classes at Phillip Island. He always had a job ahead of him after going into the race as the eighth fastest qualifier, his worst grid position since he was tenth on the Valencia grid in 2008.
“To start eighth and finish third is not a bad result and, considering the trouble we had this weekend, we can be happy,” Rossi said.
“Today, Casey was riding in a different sport and I want to say congratulations to him. The podium was the maximum for us but it was still a hard fight to get there.”
Lorenzo doggedly chased Stoner home and was always well clear of Fiat Yamaha team-mate Rossi.
“We knew Casey would be hard to beat today,” Lorenzo said.
“I tried my best, riding as hard as I could at the start and occasionally it seemed like I was closing a little bit, but then on the next lap Casey would extend his lead again by a few tenths.
“I kept trying but I didn’t have much hope and halfway through I decided it was better not to take risks.”
Italian Andrea Dovizioso lost ground in the race for third place in the world championship when he retired with trouble to his Repsol Honda bike on the fourth lap and is 18 points adrift of Rossi in fifth place.
Leading standings
1. Lorenzo (FIAT Yamaha) 333 points, 2. Pedrosa (Honda) 228, 3. Stoner (Ducati) 205, 4. Rossi (FIAT Yamaha) 197, 5. Dovizioso (Repsol Honda) 179, 6. Spies (Yamaha) 163, 7. Hayden (Ducati) 152, 8. Simoncelli (Honda) 102, 9. De Puniet (Honda) 100, 10. Melandri (Honda) 93.