Toseland impresses as Stoner picks up where he left off
So the 2008 MotoGP season picked up where it ended with Casey Stoner winning with a five second margin over rookie Jorge Lorenzo. However the race, under the floodlights of the Losail circuit, was a lot more impressive, exciting and interesting than many of the Stoner dominated races of 2007.
Pocket rocket Dani Pedrosa made an awesome start to shoot from the 3rd row of the grid to the lead by turn one, rookies Lorenzo, Toseland and Dovizioso were also near the front as Rossi and Stoner were pushed back. The early exchanges saw a number of passes from various riders, none more exhilarating than Toseland’s Superbike-esqe move on Lorenzo as he shoved the Spaniard out of the way (fortunately and suprisingly neither rider went down).
Rossi made his way to the front with some superb late breaking moves, and lead the race for a number of laps until his Bridgestone tyres seemed to lose a lot of grip. Then world Champion Casey Stoner decided enough was enough and took the race by the scruff of the neck. Lorenzo tried valiantly to stay in touch with the Aussie and Pedrosa seemingly coasted to third place, Rossi was pipped to the line for fourth place by fellow Italian Andrea Dovizioso.
James Toseland managed to stay in contact with the chasing pack despite the obvious lack of straight line speed, and finished in sixth place. A very good result for the reigning World Superbike Champion and encouraging for the season ahead should the Tech 3 Yamaha team manage to get more out of the bike.
I did not manage to survive till 3am to watch the MotoGP, but sounds like it was a good race …
But from what I saw on TV during the 125 and 250cc races, I am not too impressed with the night race idea.
a) what is the point to spend all that money for lighting up a track that is only few hours ahead of European time zones …
b) the TV picture was horrible. lots of glare, thousands of artificial “suns” everywhere
then I am not sure if there really were no spectators on track or they were only wiped out from the screens by the lighting, but it did make the races feel very weird …
I agree it was all a big gimmick and probably a little un-necessary and extravagant. I never really noticed the lack of fans until mid-way through the race when it dawned on me that something was a little odd.
Good race though and a good start to the season.