Stoner Wins and Takes Points Lead at Soaking Silverstone

Casey Stoner (Repsol Honda RC212V) made light of atrocious conditions in the British Grand Prix to achieve his third consecutive victory and take the World Championship lead. Team-mate Andrea Dovizioso (Repsol Honda RC212V) rode a well-judged race to make it a one-two for the Repsol Honda team. Last man on the podium was Colin Edwards (Yamaha).

Stoner gave the crowd a masterful display of inch-perfect wet-weather riding, taking the lead on lap two and never relinquishing it. Despite persistent heavy rain, blustery wind and rivers of water running across the track, Stoner never put a wheel wrong. In addition to several aquaplaning scares during the race, he struggled during the early laps to see where he was going because water had got inside his visor while he was behind Dovizioso on lap one. His other issue was keeping the tyres warm – whenever he eased his pace the tyres cooled and lost some grip, so he had to stay on the limit throughout.

By half distance Stoner was 5.7s ahead of his team-mate. With three laps to go he started lapping other riders – a very rare event in MotoGP – and by the time the chequered flag came out he was 15s in front of Dovizioso.

This was the Australian’s fourth win from the first six races of 2011 and the success moved him into the World Championship lead, 18 points ahead of reigning World Champion Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) who crashed out of third place just before halfway.

Dovizioso started brilliantly to lead the first lap, then after Stoner came past he had his hands full as he battled with Lorenzo and Marco Simoncelli (San Carlo Honda Gresini RC212V), who had both qualified on the front row alongside pole-sitter Stoner. Dovizioso then found himself all alone after Lorenzo fell and then Simoncelli, the Italian tumbling as he braked for the first turn at the start of lap 11. Simoncelli was a victim of the deep standing water at various parts of the track which caused many a scare during the 20 laps. From that point on Dovizioso was able to control his position to take his second podium result of 2011.

This was Stoner and Dovizioso’s second one-two of 2011, following their identical performance at last month’s French GP.

The rain was good news for Toni Elias (LCR Honda MotoGP RC212V) who has struggled in the dry so far this year but was able to score his best result of in eighth place, just four tenths of a second ahead of Hiroshi Aoyama (San Carlo Honda Gresini RC212V).