by Tracy Hagen

Casey Stoner roared back from his defeat to Jorge Lorenzo at Misano two weeks ago to win his eighth MotoGP race of the year at Motorland Aragon today. The Australian Honda rider collected another 25 points for his effort and extended his championship lead on defending world champion Lorenzo to 44 points with four races to go.

Stoner took his pole position grid spot under dark clouds, and saw his teammate Dani Pedrosa and Yamaha’s Ben Spies pass by on the way to and through Turn 1. Stoner took care of those two problems before the end of the first lap, and ran away to a 8.162 second victory.

For Pedrosa, the remainder of the race was an uneventful ride to the second step of the podium. For Spies, the race was the opposite of his usual start slow, finish fast race craft. Spies settled into third with a gap to fourth for the first few laps, and then the irritating Italian Marco Simoncelli closed up on Spies. Simoncelli passed Spies on lap 9 and then prompty ran straight into the grass where the track went left, giving third back to Spies and allowing Lorenzo to move up to fourth. Four laps later Lorenzo passed Spies, and three laps after that Simoncelli slithered past, again. Spies’ lap times increased about two seconds from the beginning to the end of the race, about twice that of the riders that finished ahead of him.

In contrast, sixth place finisher Alvaro Bautista kept his Suzuki on song far better, and his lap times only increased a half-second over the course of the race. Bautista ran down factory Ducati rider Nicky Hayden and satellite Ducati rider Hector Barbera to get to sixth, and over the last handful of laps Bautista was matching Stoner’s lap times. If Bautista could only figure out how to qualify better, things could get mighty interesting for Suzuki.

Nicky Hayden’s race deteriorated quickly into a fairing banging battle with the Bautista and Hector Barbera. Hayden finished seventh, a far cry from the third place he earned here last year. But then, the 2010 Ducati was nearly a second faster than this year’s bike.

Hayden’s teammate, Valentino Rossi, made MotoGP history of the wrong kind by being the first rider to run out of engines in one season, and had to start the race from the pit lane. Rossi spent much of the race riding with the tail-enders, and was beaten by rookie Cal Crutchlow. Props to Crutchlow.

Riders having absolute disaster races included:

• Randy De Puniet, who ran off the track with Karel Abraham at the start, and ran off again at the end.
• Colin Edwards, who slowed drastically over the second-half and was the final rider to finish.
• Toni Elias, who was knocked down by Loris Capirossi.
• Loris Capirossi, who carelessly rode into the rear tire of Elias in his effort to move up from last place.
• Andrea Dovisioso, who crashed on lap 1, second turn.
• Karel Abraham, who crashed on lap 1, first turn.

Next race: Motegi, October 2, nuclear radiation permitting