Barcelona MotoGP: Jorge Lorenzo beats Hondas to win

Lorenzo sprinted off the line, almost banging into the side of polesitter Dani Pedrosa as they jostled for position into Turn 1. Meanwhile Marc Marquez was dive-bombing down the inside to take third from sixth on the grid.

For the opening five laps there was a lead pack of five bikes, with Cal Crutchlow and Valentino Rossi tagged onto the back of the Spanish trio.

But through the tight left-hander at Turn 6 the front of Crutchlow's Tech 3 Yamaha got away from him and he slid into the gravel and out of the race.

Just seconds later he was joined in the kitty litter by the Ducati of Nicky Hayden who retired from sixth place in almost identical fashion at Turn 10.

The lead three edged away from Rossi in fourth. There was seldom much between them, but the positions never actually changed.

With seven laps to go Lorenzo upped the pace and stretched his advantage over Pedrosa past a second.

Pedrosa had his hands full defending from Marquez rather than working on a move for the lead.

Heading into the penultimate lap there was nothing to separate the Honda pair, and they actually touched. They both kept control, and a charging final lap by Marquez took him right back to the tail of his championship-leading team-mate.

For the second race in a row Rossi had an opening lap clash with Alvaro Bautista. This time he was able to continue, while Bautista was left ruing the loss of a good result after qualifying strongly in fourth.

Rossi showed strong pace at the end of the race, but was almost six seconds behind his victorious team-mate by the flag.

Stefan Bradl had a quiet run to fifth, while in sixth Bradley Smith had his best Moto GP run to date, passing Ducati's Andrea Dovizioso with a lap to go. Aleix Espargaro was the top CRT finisher in eighth.

Results - 25 laps:

Pos  Rider             Team/Bike                Time/Gap
 1.  Jorge Lorenzo     Yamaha                 43m06.479s
 2.  Dani Pedrosa      Honda                    + 1.763s
 3.  Marc Marquez      Honda                    + 1.826s
 4.  Valentino Rossi   Yamaha                   + 5.874s
 5.  Stefan Bradl      LCR Honda               + 26.756s
 6.  Bradley Smith     Tech 3 Yamaha           + 32.228s
 7.  Andrea Dovizioso  Ducati                  + 32.692s
 8.  Aleix Espargaro   Aspar Aprilia           + 58.615s
 9.  Colin Edwards     Forward FTR-Kawasaki  + 1m03.142s
10.  Michele Pirro     Pramac Ducati         + 1m09.774s
11.  Danilo Petrucci   Ioda-Suter-BM         + 1m24.377s
12.  Claudio Corti     Forward FTR-Kawasaki  + 1m33.679s
13.  Yonny Hernandez   PBM Aprilia           + 1m45.355s
14.  Bryan Staring     Gresini FTR-Honda     + 1m50.745s
15.  Javier del Amor   Avinitia FTR-Kawasak      + 1 Lap
16.  Lukas Pesek       Ioda-Suter-BMW            + 1 Lap

Retirements:
     Hector Barbera    Avinitia FTR-Kawasaki     15 laps
     Karel Abraham     Cardion Aprilia           10 laps
     Cal Crutchlow     Tech 3 Yamaha              5 laps
     Nicky Hayden      Ducati                     5 laps
     Andrea Iannone    Pramac Ducati              4 laps
     Randy de Puniet   Aspar Aprilia               1 lap
     Alvaro Bautista   Gresini Honda              0 laps
     Michael Laverty   PBM-Aprilia                0 laps