2007 Dutch GP Yamaha Rossi – 0
Valentino Rossi claimed a stunning victory in the Dutch TT at Assen, overtaking Casey Stoner with a demon out-braking move with three laps to go to snatch the lead and the win.
The 28-year-old Italian’s third win of the season, which was also the 150th for Yamaha, came after he started 11th on the grid on his Yamaha and reduced Stoner’s championship lead to 21 points.
World champion Nicky Hayden completed the podium with his first top-three finish of the season on his Repsol Honda in what was without doubt the most entertaining race of the season.
At the lights it was advantage Stoner as the Ducati rider roared into a huge lead from the Suzukis of pole-sitter Chris Vermeulen and John Hopkins.
Hopkins passed his team-mate for second on lap two and quickly settled into a good rhythm behind Stoner, but Vermeulen’s bike was not working as well.
By lap six he had been passed by the Repsol Hondas of Hayden and Dani Pedrosa and the Yamahas of Rossi and Colin Edwards and was down in seventh.
Rossi had been carving through the field like a hot knife through butter, with his favoured overtaking spot coming at the Gert Timmer chicane at the end of the lap.
That corner did for Edwards, Pedrosa and Hayden and gave him clear track once he made it into third. A string of successive fastest lap closed him in on Hopkins and he duly sliced inside him on lap 12 when the American missed the apex at the struben hairpin.
Yet more fastest laps saw him close onto Stoner’s tail and once more it was the chicane that he picked out as his passing spot, twice forcing the Australian to close the door on him on corner entry.
Try as Stoner did, he could not shake off the Italian despite upping his pace by 0.3 seconds per lap and eventually fell victim at the same spot on lap 23.
Three classic Rossi laps followed to give him his 61st career win by a margin of 1.909 seconds by the flag.
Behind the front-two Hayden and Pedrosa looked purposeful as the completed a double-team on Hopkins at turn one on lap 14, the world champion moving into third on the inside and Pedrosa into fourth around the outside at the same time.
And that’s how they finished with Hayden putting the nightmare of the first half of the season behind him to lead his team-mate and Hopkins over the line by the finish.
Edwards ran a lonely race to finish sixth, unable to challenge those in front but 20 seconds ahead of the next rider.
That ought to have been Vermeulen, but he was involved in an accident with Randy de Puniet on lap six.
Vermeulen, who had been dropping back at the time, lost control of his Suzuki entering Mandeveen but brilliantly saved it and attempted to turn in while de Puniet’s Kawasaki was already on the same piece of tarmac.
The resultant collision put the Frenchman out on the spot and saw Vermeulen re-mount to finish a distant and pointless 16th.
Alex Barros picked up a comfortable seventh on his d’Antin Ducati with his team-mate Alex Hofmann next up. But the German had to fight every inch of the way as he was involved in a four-way scrap with Anthony West, Carlos Checa and Marco Melandri.
Melandri, who started fourth, slid his Gresini Honda wide at de Bult on the penultimate lap, costing him places to Hofmann and West’s Kawasaki and dropping him to 11th, but he re-passed Checa’s LCR Honda on the last lap to complete the top ten with only three tenths of a second covering all four.
