MotoGP news

Ducato savours Stoner's tenth win

Ducati Marlboro Team rider Casey Stoner scorched to his tenth victory of the year in faultless style at Sepang today, leading every one of the 21 laps and setting the new record on lap 15. His team-mate Loris Capirossi came home in 11th place. 

"The bike, the tyres and everything were performing really well but it was a very, very difficult race," said Stoner. "The biggest battle I had was being out front by myself and not having anyone to focus on. I've been fine with it all year but this track seems to take it out of you a little bit more. Sometime after half-distance I had a couple of front-end loses, so I had to change my style a little bit, the way I was going into corners, to make sure I didn't lose the front any more. That took up a lot more of my energy and concentration, so it was quite hard to keep it up at the end. The reason the gap was going up and down so much was because I was trying to get a break for one lap, just to recover a little bit. Unfortunately I'd let them catch too much, so then I'd have to really concentrate for another lap which would take more of my energy away, so I think I'm very lucky and very happy to come out on top. Marco and Dani were fast right to the end, they were putting a lot of pressure on me and they never let me go. After I crossed the line I started to feel a bit dizzy, so it was definitely a hard race." 

Capirossi started from the fourth row of the grid and knew the race was going to be a tough challenge. He spent the closing stages battling with Alex Barros, just beating the Brazilian.

"I don't really know what happened today," said Capirossi. "It was a very tough race for me, and it's a shame because this is one of my favourite tracks and I came into this weekend from two very good races. Unfortunately our package didn't work as well today as it did in the previous races, we had some difficulties, so I was fighting with Barros for 11th place, which isn't the kind of result I was hoping for here. I hope things go better at Valencia."

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