Casey Stoner riding a Repsol Honda claimed the eighth victory of the MotoGP 2011 season with a dominating victory at Motorland Aragon in Spain. This was a sweet moment for the Repsol Honda team itself as it was also the 100th victory for the Repsol Honda team itself. Stoner’s victory now puts him 44 points ahead of Yamaha rider Jorge Lorenzo who could only finish 3rd in today’s race behind the second place rider Dani Pedrosa who was on another Repsol Honda motorcycle. Repsol is a Spanish oil company and a team sponsored by it claiming the 100th victory in Spain was perhaps fitting. Unfortunately the third Repsol Honda ridden by Andrea Dovizioso failed to finish the race due to its having crashed out on the 3rd corner of the first lap itself. Marco Simoncelli finished fourth in the race after having looked good for a podium position when he ran off the circuit. Ben Spies on the second factory Yamaha finished fifth while Alvaro Bautista on the sole Rizla Suzuki dazzled to take sixth in the race ahead of the factory Marlboro Ducati of Nicky Hayden who finished in seventh ahead of Mappfre Aspar Ducati of Hector Barbera in eighth. Ninth place went to a charging and stubborn Cal Crutchlow on the Monster Tech3 Yamaha, who doggedly fought Marlboro Ducati’s Valentino Rossi who finished tenth ahead of Hiroshi Aoyama who finished eleventh ahead of Randy De Puniet in twelfth on the Pramac Ducati. The thirteenth and last finish went to Colin Edwards riding the Monster Tech3 Yamaha. A coming together of Loris Capirossi on the Pramac Ducati and Toni Elias on the Playboy LCR Honda saw both of them crashing out of the race and joining Karel Abraham on the Cardion AB Ducati and Andrea Dovizioso on the list of non finishers of today’s race.
Another reason why today’s race was that Valentino Rossi became the first rider to incur a penalty start from pit lane 10 seconds after the red lights went off due to his having exhausted all six engines allocated to the team for the season. Rossi preferred to take the penalty at Aragon rather than at Motegi in two weeks time. This situation of Rossi’s is due to the experimenting with different chassis settings requiring different engine mounts and therefore running over the allocated numbers.