Casey Stoner (Repsol Honda RC213V) moved into the MotoGP World Championship lead with a brilliant victory in today’s Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril. Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC213V) also rode a superb race to finish in third place, just 2.2s behind his team-mate.

Starting from pole position for the first time this year, Stoner resisted relentless pressure from Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) throughout the 28 laps to score his second MotoGP victory in eight days. It was a thrilling encounter with Stoner leading from the first corner of the first lap to the chequered flag, but only just.

The reigning World Champion struggled with tyre chatter in the early laps and had to back off a little, which allowed Lorenzo to close right up on him. The Australian dug deeper, experimenting with different mapping settings and then adjusting his riding technique to deny the Spaniard a chance to attack. At the end he crossed the finish line 1.421s ahead of his great rival. This win was Stoner’s 35th success in the elite class and moved him into the series lead, a single point ahead of Lorenzo.

Pedrosa led into the first corner, but encountered some wheelspin on the exit, which had him fighting for control and allowed both Stoner and Lorenzo past. From there Pedrosa stay in touch with the leaders, but he too had his issues. He was not as fast as he would have liked through the corners and he too suffered some chatter, so he never quite got close enough to challenge his compatriot for second place. However, his third podium result from the first three races of the year keeps him very much in the title hunt. It was also Pedrosa’s 100th podium finish across the MotoGP, 250 and 125 classes.

Alvaro Bautista (San Carlo Honda Gresini RC213V) had another strong ride to sixth place, though he was hoping for more. The Spaniard could not stop or turn his bike as well as he wanted to and will aim to fix those issues in tomorrow’s tests here, which will be attended by all the top teams.

Rookie Stefan Bradl (LCR Honda MotoGP RC213V) once again impressed the MotoGP paddock with a ride that belied his lack of experience in the premier class. The reigning Moto2 World Champion enjoyed himself, starting from the fourth row to chase Valentino Rossi (Ducati) during the early stages and then settling into a lengthy duel with former World Superbike Champion Ben Spies. The pair swapped positions on several occasions, the more experienced Spies eventually winning the contest aboard his factory Yamaha, putting Bradl ninth at the finish.

Michele Pirro (San Carlo Honda Gresini FTR-Honda) made something of a breakthrough at Estoril today, scoring his first MotoGP points aboard his Fireblade-powered CRT bike. The Italian was the third CRT machine to get to the chequered flag, in 14th place.

After two events on consecutive weekends the MotoGP circus now takes a week break before returning for the French Grand Prix at Le Mans on May 20.

MotoGP rider quotes

Casey Stoner, Repsol Honda: race winner

“In the end it was another fantastic weekend for us. This morning we were more confident but also a little concerned because yesterday afternoon when we had a very similar setting to what we had in FP3 the bike was a bit worse in the warm conditions. In warm-up we didn’t have a big problem with chatter, but in the race, in warmer conditions, we struggled a lot more. This was very difficult to ride with. In the first part of the race I was confident and attacking the track, but I almost lost the front twice due to the chatter. From this point I backed off a little, tried to stay smooth and just wanted to stay in front of Jorge and Dani, but Jorge was coming strong. I had to try and keep my pace and not make too many mistakes, so I was changing the mapping to try and reduce the chatter problem. Towards the end of the race I began to understand how to ride around it, this made things smoother and I found some more pace and was able to bring it home for a great race win.”

Dani Pedrosa, Repsol Honda: 3rd

“It was a really tough race from the beginning. The pace was very, very high from the first lap to the final one. Casey rode a good race, unbelievably strong. I had a big shake in the first braking area, Casey and Jorge overtook me and I lost 1.5 seconds on the first lap. During the race I had some issues in the middle of the corner, I was not fast with corner speed. Each lap I tried to get a little better, to try and modify my riding style, the mapping and my braking points. I tried everything. I managed to match their lap times, but I couldn’t close the gap. Three races on the podium is very good overall, but in three races we missed something, so let’s try it again in the next one. To reach my 100th podium is amazing and shows how fast the time goes. I’m very happy for that and I want to thank all my teams and sponsors during this time and especially Honda because I’ve been with them for my whole career".

Alvaro Bautista, San Carlo Honda Gresini: 6th

“It was a tough race. After practice I thought I had the pace to fight for fourth place, but I didn’t have a good feeling from the front so I was struggling to turn the bike. It cost me a few valuable tenths that made me lose touch with Dovizioso and Crutchlow. Now we will have a close look at the data and try to understand why this happened, as well as working on our weak point, which is braking. Sixth place isn’t a bad result but we should have been much closer to the two Tech3 bikes. We have a test tomorrow and that will be very useful to us.”

Stefan Bradl, LCR Honda MotoGP: 9th

“Well... this has been a very hard weekend for us in general. We have struggled a lot with rear grip immediately on Friday morning but Saturday we have found some good adjustments. Unfortunately for the all race we had some issues going into the corners. My start was okay and I could make some good manoeuvres in the beginning but then I was a bit on the limit and in the middle of the race I was losing too much in the corners entries which was always our problem this weekend. Especially in the fast corners I needed to wait to open the throttle and this cost us a lot of time. We have never had this problem before and Spies had a better pace than us during the race, but in the end I can say this was another good weekend.”

Michel Pirro, San Carlo Honda Gresini: 14th

“With eight laps to go I could see on the big screen that Stoner was starting to lap people so I pushed extra hard to the end because I would have been really disappointed to get lapped. I’m happy we made it to the end and I picked up my first points of the season. Today I just tried to stay upright and make the most of what we had underneath us and hopefully in the future we can hope for more than that. I want to thank the team for their hard work here; hopefully we can have some new stuff to work with at Le Mans.”

Pole position : 1m36.937m (155.309Km/h) Casey Stoner, Honda
Fastest lap : Lap 3 - 1m36.909m (155.353Km/h) Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha
Circuit record lap : 1m36.909m (155.353Km/h) Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha, 2012)
Circuit Best Lap : 1m35.715m (157.291Km/h) Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha, 2008)

Event results - Round 3 - Race 1

1 Casey Stoner 45'37.513 AUS HONDA Repsol Honda Team
2 Jorge Lorenzo 1.421 SPA YAMAHA Yamaha Factory Racing
3 Dani Pedrosa 3.621 SPA HONDA Repsol Honda Team
4 Andrea Dovizioso 13.846 ITA YAMAHA Monster Yamaha Tech 3
5 Cal Crutchlow 16.690 GBR YAMAHA Monster Yamaha Tech 3
6 Alvaro Bautista 21.884 SPA HONDA Honda Gresini
7 Valentino Rossi 26.797 ITA DUCATI Ducati Team
8 Ben Spies 33.262 USA YAMAHA Yamaha Factory Racing
9 Stefan Bradl 35.867 GER HONDA LCR Honda MotoGP
10 Hector Barbera 53.363 SPA DUCATI Pramac Racing Team
11 Nicky Hayden 1'02.630 USA DUCATI Ducati Team
12 Aleix Espargaro* 1'20.736 ESP ART Power Electronics Aspar
13 Randy De Puniet* 1'23.483 FRA ART Power Electronics Aspar
14 Michele Pirro* 1'37.905 ITA HONDA Honda Gresini
15 Danilo Petrucci* 1 Lap ITA IODA Came IodaRacing Project
16 Karel Abraham DNF - 5 Laps CZE DUCATI Cardion AB Motoracing
17 James Ellison* DNF - 10 Laps GBR ART Paul Bird Motorsport
18 Yonny Hernandez* DNF - 12 Laps COL BQR Avintia Racing MotoGP
19 Mattia Pasini* DNF - 17 Laps ITA ART Speed Master
20 Ivan Silva* DNF - 17 Laps ESP BQR Avintia Racing MotoGP

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