MotoGP news

Pedrosa: Victory was important for the championship

Repsol Honda rider Dani Pedrosa stormed to a stunning runaway victory at Catalunya today, cheered all the way by more than 113,000 adoring fans. The Spaniard's start-to-finish win was his second of the year and completed a hat-trick of home-tarmac successes at Valencia last November, Jerez in March and now Catalunya. Team-mate Nicky Hayden had another tough one, coming in eighth after running sixth.

Pedrosa rode a perfect race, showing matchless speed and relentless pace that put him 0.658 seconds ahead after the first lap, 3.9 seconds in front at one-quarter distance and 7.2 seconds ahead midway through the race. He had stretched his advantage to more than eight seconds before he eased off, crossing the line 2.8 seconds ahead of Valentino Rossi. Pedrosa's 29th GP win closes the points gap on series leader Rossi to just seven points as the 18-race 2008 MotoGP series approaches half-distance.

Dani Pedrosa commented on his win: "I'm very happy about this win, my thanks to all the people around me. Today was also very important for the championship, I am now five points closer to the lead, but there are still many races ahead of us, so we need to keep pushing and be consistent. We had a few issues in practice here, so my team was thinking what they could do and they made a small adjustment before the race that improved the bike and helped me to run that pace. Once again, a big thanks to them.

"I couldn't believe the fans, it seems like every year there are more and more. I'm very happy they were here because I know it was difficult to get into the track today. I was all alone, pushing to go faster and faster and I could see everyone cheering me on. At one point I lost a bit of concentration, but I got my focus back and kept pushing. Now we have two days of tests which will be very important for the next few races."

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