Dani Pedrosa made Casey Stoner’s championship lead just that little less comfotable today as he beat him to second position in Misano. The result meant that race-winner, Jorge Lorenzo, was able to take 9 points out of Stoner’s lead at the top of the championship.

Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC212V): 2nd
“I’m a little disappointed with the race because the bike didn’t feel as good as it was in practice. We wanted to make a change to the suspension to improve it a little, but we had the opposite effect. Sometimes it happens. From the first lap I realised I couldn’t keep up with Jorge and Casey, at the beginning the bike was closing the front and then it was sliding the rear. The second part of the race was good, Jorge had a perfect race today, but I was able improve my times lap by lap and catch Casey. I overtook him and maintained my rhythm to the finish with another second place in two weekends, which is not so bad. We’ve been lucky today as it was cooler than yesterday and finally the rain didn’t come. It’s been two very demanding races in a row and this one in particular was perhaps the toughest of the season so far, as the circuit is challenging with so many hard braking areas and it was hot again. Also, after Indy it has been difficult to recover from the jetlag and fatigue. Let’s hope we can get some rest and be stronger for Aragon.”

Casey Stoner, Repsol Honda: 3rd
“At the beginning of the race I was cautious as there were a few spots of rain. Once this cleared up I was pretty comfortable behind Jorge, I didn’t feel the need to push and then the tiredness suddenly hit me. It was hard to find the braking points and change direction on the bike, there was nothing wrong with the tyres, nothing wrong with the bike, the team did a great job and gave me a fantastic package. I’m just worn out. After the past few races I’ve had to put in a lot more effort in Laguna and Brno, riding a lot harder than I normally would. This together with the neck injury from Assen, which I’ve been struggling to recover from due to lack of training from the hectic race calendar, has finally caught up with me. For the second half of the race I was just too tired, simple as that. I’m very grateful to have finished on the podium. All credit to Jorge, he had a fantastic race, hopefully by Aragon I’ll be fully fit and recovered.”

Andrea Dovizioso, Repsol Honda: 5th
“It was a tough race, I had to push hard and ride aggressively and we had to cut the power a lot due to fuel consumption issues. We suffered from this during the whole race weekend, but after warm-up I received the bad news that we had to cut even more power. This hasn’t been such a big issue this year and in fact it has never been the case that I am unable to match Simoncelli in acceleration. This stems from the riding style and the set-up of the electronics, especially the engine braking. I knew that with this cut in power it would have been impossible to fight for the podium, so this affected my motivation. We had a good battle with Marco and Spies. On this occasion, for the first time this season, Marco beat me so congratulations to Marco. It was a good battle but our target was to gain some points on Lorenzo and we didn’t manage to. We are still third in the championship which is the most important thing. We are confident and will continue working.”

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