by Tracy Hagen

Honda’s Casey Stoner won his home Grand Prix in Australia and, in doing so, secured his second MotoGP world championship. It was figuratively and literally Stoner’s day – the scrappy Aussie started from pole and never saw another bike save for a couple lappers, and it was his 26th birthday.

Stoner led a Honda 1-2-3-4 finish, followed by Marco Simoncelli, Andrea Dovisioso, and Dani Pedrosa. Indeed, if you were not on a factory Honda today, you were out of luck.

Neither factory Yamaha riders started the race. Ben Spies crashed in qualifying and was still in a daze the following day. Defending world champion Jorge Lorenzo crashed in Sunday warm-up and unfortunately had his left hand trapped under the bike. Lorenzo lost the tip of the ring finger on his left hand, and will miss next week’s MotoGP at Sepang, Malaysia.

Lorenzo’s withdrawal promoted the lone factory Suzuki to a front row start, and rider Alvaro Bautista was competing for a fifth-place finish with three laps to go. Then, after a sudden squirt of rain, Bautista was sliding along the ground.

The factory Ducati riders of Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden had a miserable race, again. Rossi qualified 13th and made up positions quickly at the start to reach seventh. Rossi then overtook teammate Hayden, and barreled down on Bautista. A second after passing Bautista Rossi barrel-rolled the Ducati, crashing out for the second race in succession.

Hayden’s race started off outstandingly, taking over second place at Turn 1 and holding station over the first two laps. But at the end of the race, with the freak rain burst drenching the track and then stopping as soon as it had started, Hayden elected to pit and re-join on his wet bike to finish seventh. The decision definitely cost Hayden one position, perhaps two.

Colin Edwards, the red-neck Texan with a shot of outback Australian blood, finished a commendable fifth place on the Monster Yamaha.

Pramac Ducati rider Randy De Puniet had his best race of the year with a sixth-place finish. The Frenchman rode off course on lap 14, caught his breath, and stayed steady to the end.

Toni Elias (Honda) and Loris Capirossi (Ducati) finished a lap down in eighth and ninth, respectively.

In the interest of fairness, Karel Abraham (Ducati), the only rider not mentioned so far, crashed but finished tenth.

Finally, yours truly was traveling in Asia the last two weeks and the missing Motegi chart is below. What mess that race was.

Next race: Sepang, October 23