by Tracy Hagen

Jorge Lorenzo rolled up another win in Catalunya on his Yamaha and muscled his way back into the championship chase to close within seven points of Honda’s Dani Pedrosa. Pedrosa finished second, 1.763 seconds behind, with teammate Marc Marquez third across the line and a scant 0.053 behind.

Click on graph for hi-res version.

The race was practically a repeat of Mugello two weeks ago, with Lorenzo leading from the drop of the flag and giving the Hondas a hard time all the way to the finish. Marquez bided his time in third but could not find a way around Pedrosa this time. He happily took the last podium position after throwing away second in Mugello with an unforced crash.

Lorenzo’s teammate, Valentino Rossi, finished fourth. The Italian mega-star was nearly torpedoed by Alvaro Baustista on the first lap when Bautista dive-bombed Rossi on the approach to Turn 10 and fell over. Rossi ran wide, lost positions, but stayed up on and the track. Michele Pirro ran off to avoid Baustista while Michael Laverty crashed as well. The incident was nearly a replay of Mugello when Bautista and Rossi crashed together on the first lap.

The glorious weather in sunny Spain had a paradoxical effect of making the track hot and greasy. The list of crashers at Catalunya included Cal Crutchlow, Nicky Hayden, Andrea Iannone, and Hector Barbera. Randy De Puniet and Karel Abraham retired with engine problems.

The hero award of the weekend has to go to Bradley Smith. Smith crashed hard at Mugello and split his finger open “like a sasuage,” according to Smith’s father. Today Smith finished sixth on his Monster Yamaha, his best thus far in MotoGP, by running down and passing Ducati factory Andrea Dovizioso in the closing laps.

The CRT superbike divisions was won by Aleix Espargaro, again, with Colin Edwards the second CRT rider and ninth overall.

Pedrosa continues to lead the championship at 123 points. Lorenzo trails by 7 and Marquez by 30.

So far Lorenzo has three wins, Pedrosa two, and Marquez one. However, Lorenzo has used four out of the five engines available to him while the Repsol Honda riders are on their second. On top of that, Yamaha have already withdrawn one of Lorenzo’s engines from further use. Ouch.

Next race: Assen, June 29