by Tracy Hagen

For anyone who felt that they had seen too many processional races in MotoGP this year, Valencia was the cure for their woes. Honda’s Dani Pedrosa won the race after surrendering his pole position and gambling on starting from the pits on his back-up bike fitted with slick tires. The victory was Pedrosa’s seventh of the year.

The race will surely be remembered for the unusually high number of crashes, near crashes, run-offs, and pit stops; all of which resulted in more different leaders (five) than perhaps any other race of the MotoGP era.

Thanks to the teams being unsure if the track was wet or dry and even more uncertain of the clouds overhead, the race started with bikes on all combinations of tires.

Indeed, four riders – Pedrosa, Nicky Hayden, Cal Crutchlow, and Alvaro Bautista – decided at the end of the warm-up lap that it would better to start from the pits on a bike with slick tires. The four used their considerable skills to keep the bikes balanced on the wet pavement between them and the narrow dry line on the race course.

Of those that started from the grid, all eyes were on front-row starter and newly crowned world champion Jorge Lorenzo. Lorenzo opted early for slicks while most of the rest were on rain tires. Lorenzo was unable to get on the dry line quickly after the lights turned green and was passed by five bikes going to Turn1.

Hector Barbera, starting from the ninth position on the grid, bagged the holeshot and led the field to Turn 1. Nobody was expecting Barbera to stay out in front for long, and absolutely nobody predicted what would happen next. Aleix Espargaro on the Aprilia CRT superbike, passed Barbera at Turn 2 and, incredibly, started pulling away. By the end of the first lap Espargaro’s lead was 1.774 seconds, thanks in part by Andrea Dovizioso, Casey Stoner, Valentino Rossi, Barbera, and Karel Abraham taking the final corner five-wide.

Dovizioso, who scored his only MotoGP win in similar conditions at Donington in 2009, took the race to Espargaro. Dovizoso caught and passed Espargaro about a third the way in to the third lap and took off like a shot. A lap later Dovizioso shot off the track and then took a shot for the pits to get on his spare bike with slicks.

For the second time – seriously! – Esparagaro was in the lead yet was looking back at every corner to see how far behind the MotoGP monster bikes were. Lorenzo was the closest on the mean, blue Yamaha. Almost as comical as the four superstars paddling their way out of the pits, race leader Espargaro was frantically looking for a place to get out of the way so that he could let the second place Lorenzo ride through.

Lorenzo wait to take the lead until the front straight at the start of lap five. Valentino Rossi, in his final race of his two-year self-destruction contract with Ducati, was a strong second. Ben Spies’s replacement rider, Katsayuki Nakasuga, fresh off from winning the Japanese superbike championship, was in a stronger third. Pedrosa, who lost only eight seconds with his pit lane start gamble, was in an even stronger fourth.

Where was Casey Stoner in all this? In the pits, along with four other riders to hop onto bikes with slicks.

At the end of lap five Rossi and two more riders also pitted, and the dream of Italy’s greatest rider winning on Italy’s greatest bike was effectively over.

But the race was far from over. At the end of lap six Lorenzo’s lead over Pedrosa was 2.516 seconds. At the end of lap eight, 2.173 seconds, and at the end of lap 10, 1.954 seconds.

At the end of lap 11 Lorenzo nearly crashed and Pedrosa closed to within a half-second. At the end of lap 12 Lorenzo’s lead had evaporated down to 0.137 seconds.

On lap 13 Pedrosa accidentally down-shifted into neutral and ran off course. At the end of the lap Pedrosa trailed by 4.519 seconds.

Lorenzo’s luck ran out on lap 14, however. The speedy Spaniard was bottled up behind James Ellison and, ironically, Lorenzo lost control while try to ride at the slower pace of Ellison. Lorenzo has a record for taking back a tank-slapper, but not this time: the bike finally snapped and ejected Lorenzo off to the nearest gravel pit. Lorenzo walked away, his Yamaha needed to be shoveled up.

As the race headed towards the mid-point Pedrosa was in the lead with a margin of 22 seconds, even after running off-course and starting last from the pits. Cal Crutchlow was second and gunning for Pedrosa.

Crutchlow, sadly, didn’t play it safe. He, too, slid off the track on his bum during lap 23.

Who was left in second? Stoner? No. Rossi? No. Bradl, Bautista, Dovizioso? All no. It was Nakasuga, on the Yamaha vacated by Spies in injury and disgust, now gliding around the track as if carried by angels. The tearful Japanese rider scored a second place finish in just his third MotoGP. On Monday the bike will get re-stickered with yellow 46s – let’s hope Rossi can ride it as well as Katsayuki-san did today.

Third place went to Casey Stoner, now headed off to retirement in the Australian outback. Fourth went to Bautista and fifth to his CRT teammate, Michele Pirro, for the best CRT finish of the season.

If there was a lesson that should have been learned today, it was patience. Patience paid off for Nakasuga. If Crutchlow was as patient he would have taken second, his career best. If Lorenzo had been more patient he would not have destroyed his championship winning bike. Last but not least, if Pedrosa had been patient in Australia he would have left Valencia as the new world champion.