Tuesday,
July 22, 2008
The
ANNOTICO Report
Valentino
Rossi's 66th career victory finally conquered one of the two tracks he had yet
to win on in MotoGP. The track in
The
Associated Press
July
21, 2008
Rossi's
66th career victory stopped defending world champion Casey Stoner's winning
streak at three races. Rossi finished the 32-lap race in 44 minutes, 4.311 seconds
with a top speed of 97.72 mph to set an event record.
"For
sure, the race was unbelievable," Rossi said. "It was a great battle
with Casey. It was fun, a lot of fun in this race."
With
the victory, Rossi finally conquered one of the two tracks he had yet to win on
in MotoGP. The track in
"We
knew we had to be perfect to win today," said Rossi, whose previous best
finish at Laguna Sega was third in 2005. "We made a few changes this
morning in warm-up that made us faster in the race."
Stoner,
the runaway winner at the event last year and the pole-winner Saturday,
finished second in 44:17.312 after crashing in slow turn 11 on lap 24, but
remounted to challenge Rossi. Stoner tried to become just the third rider to
crash in a grand prix but still win, but Rossi was not to be denied.
Chris
Vermulian finished third after a second-place showing
behind fellow Australian Stoner last year.
Stoner
stills leads championship standings with 212 points, 35 ahead of Vermulian.
American
Nicky Hayden, who was third early, struggled with his Michelin tires. He - and
others - had been sent wrong tires from Michelin's shop in
"Obviously
at my home race I hoped to put up a better fight than this," Hayden said.
"It was certainly a tough weekend. We struggled a bit with the
tires."
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