Casey "Stormer" conquers even Donington

Casey “Stormer” wins even in a soggy Donington Park, in a track where, theoretically, his red Missile shouldn’t have outperformed the rest of the competitors.
Indeed on Saturday during the qualifications he had made a mistake on his fast lap and for that reason he ended up in 5th position in the final grid. A grid that had 4 Michelin riders in the first 4 places: Edwards, Rossi, Pedrosa and Hayden. The qualifications results prompted all different kind of speculations given this unusual grid but we were in Donington, England, where they have the greenest run offs of all the all the MotoGp circuits so it was not surprise that on Sunday it was raining. At the beginning Pedrosa led the group for 4 laps but as soon Edwards passed him and he had to ride in the clouds of water created by the front riders his start losing positions. The Texas Tornado seemed very comfortable under the rain in a track that he knows very well and maintained the first position for 15 laps, or until he started suffering Stoner's pressure, he went wide on a right turn and left the door opened to the Aussie. Casey had been riding behind him for 10 laps at a pace very similar to the leader, but when the rain stopped and the riders formed a dry line, his Bridgestone turned to be the winning cards for the day. The Michelin tires of Edward & Co. started to overheat and losing pieces of thread as the camera mounted under Valentino’s tail showed very clearly. The analysis of the fastest lap for each rider shows 5 Bridgestone riders leading before Edwards and Rossi, the fastest Michelin men. Curiously the best time for the Bridgestone group was achieved between the 23rd and the 27th lap, when they were riding in dry conditions.
Let’s face it: Rossi never looked very comfortable Sunday. He was already more than 4 seconds behind the leaders when he started matching their lap times. On top of that he mistakenly went into the grass in a double right for which he lost precious time that could have been useful in defending his third position against Vermeulen. The young Aussie took advantage of Rossi’s rear wheelspin when the track started drying out and passed him with four laps to go relegating the Doctor in 4th position.
Now with other 10 races, Stoner has extended his lead to 26 points: not too many, but still quite a bit considering that he has won 5 of eight MotoGp races, in pretty much any condition. Right now the trio Stoner-Ducati-Bridgestone seems irresistible with Rossi, the only other contender to the World Championship, still working hard with the Fiat-Yamaha and Michelin engineers in order to improve the performance of his YZR-M1. With 2 of the last 3 races in wet conditions where he suffered the dominance of the red Casey “Stormer”, I am sure that for Assen he is hoping for a sunny day, like he had in Mugello for his last victory.

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