Dani Pedrosa Dominated 2009 MotoGP Finale

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Dani Pedrosa dominated and won 2009 MotoGP season finale in front of his home fans at Valencia as Casey Stoner failed to start after a formation lap crash. Stoner, who had won the last two MotoGP races and topped every practice session of the weekend in Spain, suffered a high-side on the warm-up lap and retired on the spot, leaving an empty space in pole position.

So it was left to Honda's Pedrosa to make his usual perfect start from the second slot of the grid and immediately open a gap over the rest of the field, led by Gresini Honda's Toni Elias and the Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi.


Within four laps the nine-time champion and his team-mate had overtaken Elias, but Pedrosa was already 2.4 seconds up the road. From then on, the gaps between the leading four riders began to increase, with Pedrosa running away and Lorenzo unable to keep up with Rossi's pace. But with 13 laps left in the 30-lap race, with a gap of 2.4 seconds from the Italian, Lorenzo began edging closer and closer to his rival. The gap, however stayed around one second for the last three laps, with Rossi taking second at the flag.

Colin Edwards (Tech 3 Yamaha) had a fine race to fourth ahead of Nicky Hayden's Ducati, with Elias finishing sixth. But the best impression in the race was probably made by Ben Spies, who in his fourth MotoGP race as a wildcard and his first for Yamaha, finished a brilliant seventh, passing several riders including Honda's Andrea Dovizioso six laps from the end. The Italian thus finished eighth, ahead of Pramac Ducati's Mika Kallio, with Gresini Honda's Alex de Angelis completing the top ten.