American Ben Spies, who was edged out of pole position by Marco Simoncelli (San Carlo Honda Gresini Team), rode a perfect race to cross the line 7.697s ahead of Casey Stoner in second place. The Texan had a good start, allowing him to narrowly avoid the drama of the first lap, when pole starter Italian Simoncelli took out Spies’ team mate Jorge Lorenzo in the third corner. Simoncelli had hoped to finally reach the podium in the Saturday race, but the Italian fell victim to a cold tyre early on.

Ben Spies takes the win-Yamaha Racing

Ben Spies “It was a strange race today as it was one of the most comfortable races we had and it resulted in a win. I saw the Simoncelli crash on the TV screen in the corner of my eye so I knew about it. I had a good feeling in the bike in the first couple of laps and had to push as much as I could to get a gap. When Casey was pushing back I still had a few tenths if I needed to, we could always match the pace. To do it this weekend with the 50th colours gives a little bit of pressure but it came out good! I was racing as hard as I could, I have to thank my guys; they gave me a great bike today. At least we’ve won a race now!”

Stoner led team mate Andrea Dovizioso to the finish, where the Italian claimed his third top three finish of the 2011 season. Stoner is now 28 points ahead of Lorenzo in the Championship while Dovizioso remains third, but is now only nine points behind the Spaniard.

Casey Stoner second and Andrea Dovizioso in third

Casey Stoner “Today we would have liked to challenge for the win but the way this weekend has gone for us I’m really very happy for a podium finish and to take some valuable points. Yesterday we weren’t happy with the bike the set up, so today we made some changes and tried to get some more feeling, but unfortunately in the warm up we didn’t get a proper chance to try it, which meant we started the race with a set up we didn’t really know. After the crash yesterday I’m a little bit sore, in the middle part of the race I started to have some problems in the left hand corners with the shoulder but in general we knew we didn’t really have the pace to stay with Ben. I tried everything possible to catch him, but he was able to retain the advantage and start to pull some more, so my congratulations to Ben, he rode a great race, but for us it was just important to get points today”.

The Ducati Team duo was lead across the finish line by Valentino Rossi in fourth and Nicky Hayden in fifth. Lorenzo was able to rejoin the race and put his head down after the clash with Simoncelli to cross the line in sixth place.

Valentino Rossi 4th “We’re pretty satisfied with this result because compared to practice, we made a big improvement in the race. It would have been nice had we found the right direction more quickly, but this is a new bike that we’re still learning to work with, so obviously it takes some experience to get it right. In the end, we managed to find a setup that allowed me to ride pretty well but, not having tried it before, I approached the first laps very carefully. To be honest, we were also a little unlucky, because the rain during the warm-up prevented us from trying the changes. Anyway, the weekend was positive overall, because we got confirmation that this bike is better in many ways, especially with regard to the rear end, which is now much more stable. On the other hand, we also know that we must keep working because we still have a gap to the competition to make up. It’s not as big as the time we lost today in terms of seconds, but it’s still there. Still, we’re all trying really hard, and we must continue to do so.”

Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team rider Colin Edwards was seventh, in front of Dani Pedrosa’s stand-in Hiroshi Aoyama. They were followed by Simoncelli in ninth, who rejoined the race after push starting his own motorcycle following the run in on the first lap. Toni Elías of the LCR Honda team completed the top ten finishers.

Cal Crutchlow exited the track with a front tyre problem, though re-entered the race to finish 14th.

Cal Crutchlow 14th “Looking at the positives I got a fantastic start and for the first few laps I was running close to the front in a MotoGP race for the first time. I felt confident I could keep V alentino behind me but then after about five or six laps I started struggling with the front tyre on the right side. I had no choice but to come in and change it because if I had carried on pushing it was going to be easy to crash and that’s the last thing I need to be doing at the moment. Having only had surgery on my left collarbone just over a week ago I just couldn’t afford to have another crash. Without that I’ve no doubt I’d have finished fourth but I’ve proved again I’ve got the speed and shown that I can race with the best in this class. It wasn’t the final result we wanted but I can’t change it and I still learned a lot, so now I’m concentrating on Mugello and getting a good result there.”

Karel Abraham ended what was otherwise a good weekend for the Cardion AB Motoracing with a fall early in the race. He was followed a short time later by Randy de Puniet (Pramac Racing), the fourth DNF of the season for the Frenchman. Both riders were unhurt in the falls.

Loris Capirossi (Pramac Racing) did not participate in the race due to injuries sustained in a fall during the qualifying session.