by Tracy Hagen

Dani Pedrosa scored his third win of the year at Brno by narrowly beating Jorge Lorenzo. The Honda rider defeated the Yamaha rider by 0.178 seconds in a hard fought victory to further improve his hopes for his first MotoGP title. Pedrosa now trails Lorenzo in the championship by just 13 points.

Monster Yamaha rider Cal Crutchlow finished a distant third for his first podium finish. Crutchlow was the first British to stand on the podium rider since Jeremy McWilliams finished third in the 2000 British Grand Prix.

Crutchlow’s teammate, Andrea Dovizioso, finished fourth. The Italian trailed the Briton throughout the race by a second or two and coasted the final three laps to finish six seconds behind Crutchlow.

Pedrosa’s teammate, world champion Casey Stoner, watched the race from Australia on doctor’s orders after injuring his ankle in Indianapolis. Ducati factory rider Nickey Hayden was another rider that watched from home convalescing with injuries from Indy.

At the end of the year we may look back at Brno as the race that captures the 2012 season the best. Lorenzo converted pole position to P1 successfully at the start. Pedrosa also made an excellent start from the front row while Crutchlow got an awful one. Over the first eleven laps Pedrosa stayed within a few-tenths of a second to Lorenzo while Crutchlow faded from view. Pedrosa passed Lorenzo in the first left turn on lap 12 and the following ten laps were a mirror image of the previous ten. On the final lap Lorenzo pushed through on Pedrosa at the site of the previous lead change. The counter-attack from Pedrosa came on the final left-right chicane section. Pedrosa lunged inside Lorenzo and the Yamaha rider ran wide enough that he nearly took the pit-in road. Pedrosa crossed the finish line with Repsol Honda team members jumping out of their shoes.

The contest for fifth through seventh was a race of highs and lows for the three riders involved. Valentino Rossi got away cleanly at the start and ran fifth in the beginning. But Rossi’s Ducati was burping smoke on the downshifts right from the second lap and the Rossi fans put away their yellow flags early. Honda riders Stefan Bradl and Alvaro Bautista caught the Italian on lap 9 and gradually pulled away over the following 13 laps. Bradl finished fifth and looks certain to have earned a ride in 2013. Bautista finished sixth and is anything but certain of a good ride in 2013.

The CRT superbike winner, Randy De Puniet, finished a typical half-minute behind Rossi.

The biggest loser of the race had to be Ben Spies, again. The clutch in his M1 Yamaha was slipping in the early laps and put the Texan deep in CRT land. Once Spies was free of the superbikes and in relatively clean air he lapped as fast as anyone on the track. That ended when the front tire lost traction on lap 9.

Next race: San Marino, September 14.