Mozdo Ro.ewoy Logunc
SGGo
MOTOGP
Wopld Championship
Road Rac= SEries
seeing that home croM. Even though k's a
lot of
pressure
h
also
helpE
you."
Vermeulen
came under
pressure
from Pedrosa soon after
and suc-
cumbed on lap 25 when he ran wide in
the left-hand turn fiYe.
"h
was tough at the beginning until I
could
go
more in front, so I could also catch
Verrneulen and then I
colld arrive second
to the end," Pedrosa said.
"But
I make
a big
mistake
once and
I
went completely off on
the Corkscrew and I was very lucky to don t
crash there and, well, it was my
first time
out of that
corner", so okay."
The Corkscrew miscue wasnt fatal,
but
Pedrosa was never
a threat to Hayden.
Vermeulen couldn't maintain his spot
after his mechanical
problems
and he
was
taken
by lYelandri three laps from the end.
He'd earlier been
passed
by
Robers
lr.
Melandri had run with Pedrosa in the
early
going
before the Spaniard
pulled
away.
Then Melandri had
to
hold
back Robefts,
who was waiting for a mistake
to steal a
podium.
"l
could tell rigtrt from the beginnirg that
I
just
didn't have
the
grip,
not so much widr
the
Suzuki, but with the other Hondas,"
RobersJr said.
"l'm
a liftle bit disappointed
because I
wanted to be closer to the leaders
from the
beginning."
M0T06P
The heat was
going
to be more of a factqr
than the bump6, which the ride6 had man-
aged for two da),/s. Michelin's Nicolas
Goubert said the track
temperature of 60-
degrees
Celcius
(
l,(kegrees Fahrenheit)
wEs the highest
ever recorded. All
the
f4ichelin riders used the hardest
possible
rears.
From
his second-ever
pole
position,
Vermeulen took ofl Would
his Bridgestones
lasl Even he wasn't sure.
"The/
were my suspicions as well, espe-
cially the front,'' he
said.
Kenny
Jr-
was an early second,
holding
the spot until the Hayden
pass
on lap nine in
the Cod
