Valentino Rossi rode his Yamaha M1 to a fighting second place in Catalunya today after an exhilarating battle with Casey Stoner, the Australian eventually taking the flag just 0.069 seconds ahead of the Fiat Yamaha rider after a nail-biting final few laps. Rossi 96th premier-class podium gives him yet another record as it takes him above Mick Doohan as the rider with the most podium finishes ever in the top class of Grand Prix racing. His team-mate Edwards suffered from grip issues throughout and was unable to stick with the leading pack from sixth on the grid, eventually finishing in tenth.

After starting from pole, Rossi found himself down in fourth on lap one and was then forced to push hard in the first three laps to get past John Hopkins before he could begin to close the gap to Dani Pedrosa, who was by then following Stoner in second place. On lap eleven of 25 Rossi made his move on the local favourite, the cheer from the grandstands proving that there was however a sizeable Italian element amongst the 112,600-strong crowd. Rossi soon started looking for passing opportunities on Stoner, making his first successful bid at the end of lap eighteen before relinquishing the lead back to the Australian on the next lap. From then on the fans were treated to some vintage wheel-to-wheel racing from the pair, with Pedrosa also in close contention, and an incredible number of passes made in several different parts of the track. Going into the penultimate lap however Stoner made his decisive move and Rossi was unable to peg him back, despite throwing every effort at it. Despite a promising qualifying performance yesterday, today’ was not Edwards’ day and he slipped several places at the start and ran a lonely race further down the order, although a last-lap pass on Nicky Hayden moved him up one position to take tenth and six points.

Twenty points for Rossi today m eans he is now fourteen behind Stoner after seven races, whilst Edwards remains tenth in the standings. After two races on the trot there is now a ten-day break before the MotoGP circus heads to Donington for the Grand Prix of Great Britain, another of Rossi’s favourite hunting grounds.

Valentino Rossi
Position: 2nd Time: +0.069
“What a race! Even if I’m disappointed not to win, it’s a great emotion to be part of a race like that and fantastic fun. It really was an amazing battle to the end with many wonderful overtaking manoeuvres by both of us in all different parts of the track! Unfortunately I lost a bit of time at the start and then it was quite hard to pass Hopkins because he was fantastic on the brakes. Then with Stoner it was a great fight and honestly I couldn’t have tried harder to win, but he was a very hard rival. There were some places were we could have been better today, not just on the straight but also in some corners, but anyway it was a great experience and it will help us to understand what we need to do to keep on improving. Yamaha and Michelin are working very hard and the fact that we could fight like this today to the very end showed this. Of course I’m sad because I’ve won a lot of times here in Montmelo and I wanted to win again, but like I said, I don’t think I could have done anymore today! We know that we can beat Stoner but today he rode like a god and he’s a fantastic rival, so congratulations to him.”

Sylvain Guintoli
Position: 14th Time: +44.399
Again I have had a good weekend as we made good progress over the three days. I like this track and we also had a good qualifying session plus I have continued to score points in every race. This is a good boost to my confidence in my first year of MotoGP. I didn’t get the best of starts but I pushed hard for all the race and for the first ten laps I had great rhythm but I also had a few problems with a bit of chatter during the race but this can be expected with new tyres since we have changed to the 16 in front tyre. I was fast straight away and Colin (Edwards) wasn’t pulling away too much but it is a little frustrating that I had to slow and drop off him a bit as I didn’t want to risk a crash too much. We must be fairly happy as we didn’t test all the tyres we wanted to and we only did eight or ten laps on each one before deciding on our race tyres as we had so much to test. I can now look forward to Donington which is like another home race as I now live not very far away from the track with my family.

Herve Poncharal – Dunlop Yamaha Tech 3 Team Manager
This is another good weekend for the team. I say that every week but truthfully we are becoming more competitive. We had another good qualifying session and during the race both riders performed well. Sylvain was very aggressive early on and his lap times were good compared to others before he struck a few problems with some chatter. During the second part of the race we were very close to Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden and we all felt that we could have passed them if the problems didn’t occur. We now have good references to work with as the package of the tyres and the machine is improving all the time. This year the 800cc machines are more competitive with each other than ever before but we are proving competitive against other factory machines and beating some. With the new tyres we are now getting we are looking forward to the next races as we feel that Dunlop tyres work well at Donington and Assen.