by Tracy Hagen

After 993 days and 45 races, Valentino Rossi finally broke his futility streak by winning the Dutch TT Saturday, round 7 of the MotoGP championship. Rossi’s historic victory came at the series most historic circuit, yet his achievement was overshadowed by what his teammate Jorge Lorenzo accomplished in the race.

After breaking his left collarbone in a very wet practice on Thursday afternoon, Lorenzo flew to Barcelona later that day, had surgery in the wee hours of Friday morning where surgeons attached a titanium plate to the fracture with eight screws, flew back to Holland later on Friday, and announced on Saturday of his intention to race. And race he did: starting from twelfth on the grid, Lorenzo was up to seventh at the end of the first lap and was fifth at the end of lap 2, 2.124 seconds from early leader Dani Pedrosa on the Repsol Honda. Lorenzo passed Cal Crutchlow on the fourth lap to move up to fourth.

Rossi took control of the race on lap 6 with a pass on Pedrosa while both were on the brakes. While the grandstands went bananas, Lorenzo was chopping away at the front runners and reduced his distance from Rossi to 1.486 seconds at the end of lap 9.

Over the next five laps Lorenzo started to lose his pace. Crutchlow was riding right on the rear tire of Lorenzo and looking for a way around the rolling china shop. Crutchlow finally moved back into fourth on lap 15 and started hunting down the Repsol Hondas of Pedrosa and Marc Marquez.

Crutchlow caught third-place Pedrosa on lap 20 but ran wide at the left-hand Strubben hairpin. Before that lap was over Crutchlow had disposed of Pedrosa and was separated from Marquez by just one second.

Marquez proved much more difficult to deal with. Like Lorenzo, Marquez was riding on adrenalin after fracturing a finger and toe from falling in Friday’s free practice. Crutchlow was not close enough to attack until there were just two laps left to run. Crutchlow saved it for the last lap at Maduk corner, but Marquez saw the Brit coming and chopped him off. Crutchlow lost 1.5 seconds and settled for third.

Pedrosa finished fourth and fingered his Bridgestone tires as being “uncontrollable.” He left Assen leading the championship at 136 points. Lorenzo trails by nine, just two less from the previous race.

The next two weeks will probably be unbearable for the championship leader Pedrosa, given that all the MotoGP chatter will be about the Yamaha riders.

Next race: Sachsenring, July 14