MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner secured his third successive victory after winning a rain-soaked German Grand Prix on Sunday.
The Marlboro Ducati rider suffered an indifferent start to the season but had come to the boil with victories in Donington Park and Assen in the past two races.
He continued his unstoppable form in an eventful German MotoGP at the Sachsenring, finishing 3.708sec ahead of Valentino Rossi, who is second in the overall standings and who started the day from way down in seventh on the grid. Chris Vermeulen finished third.
The race had looked set to be a wet weather repeat of Dani Pedrosa´s comprehensive 2007 victory, after the Repsol Honda rider once again used his finely-honed launch control to take the holeshot. He stormed out of the blocks and immediately created a 2 second gap. The advantage increased to 7.5 seconds by the time the Spaniard crossed the line for a sixth time, but just moments later disaster struck as he lost control of the RC212V and picked up his first DNF of 2008.
Pedrosa´s crash allowed Stoner to return to the script written in practice sessions for the German race, and the Australian needed no further invitation. He assumed the reigns in the same style with which he had taken the win at the past two races, breaking free and riding solo for 23 laps right up until the chequered flag was waved.
Stoner’s achievement was all the greater as he had been feeling sick since Saturday morning.
“I have been feeling sick since Saturday morning and my concentration levels were low,” admitted Stoner.
“I was losing it in all different places. We were lucky to come out of this with the victory.”
Stoner may not have had it so easy had Dani Pedrosa, starting from second on the grid, not retired after a heavy spill on lap six.
The Spaniard jumped into an early lead and managed to pull away seemingly at ease, having put seven seconds between his Honda and Stoner by the time of his fall.
Pedrosa’s compatriot Jorge Lorenzo, along with Colin Edwards and Marco Melandri all joined the Honda rider in crashing out in the extremely wet conditions.
But Pedrosa will rue his slip more than the others as it sees him fall off the lead in the world championship standings, with Rossi taking over and Stoner now only four points behind .
“I am very excited about the result as it has seen me take back the overall lead,” purred the extrovert Italian.
“I eventually got up to a great pace and very close to Casey. These 20 points are very important,” he added.
Vermeulen was equally ecstatic especially as he had to hold off a stern challenge from Alex de Angelis for the final podium spot.
“The team did a great job and I am sick in the positive Aussie sense of the word!” he said.
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