Pedrosa ends season with home win

The Ducati rider, who had won the previous two races and topped every session of the weekend in Spain, suffered a high-side on the warm-up lap and retired on the spot, leaving a empty space in pole position.

So it was left to Honda's Pedrosa to make his usual perfect start from the second slot of the grid and immediately open a gap over the rest of the field, led by Toni Elias (Gresini Honda) and the Yamahas of Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi.

Within four laps the nine-time champion and his team-mate had overtaken Elias, but Pedrosa was already 2.4 seconds up the road.

From then on, the gaps between the leading four riders began to increase, with Pedrosa running away and Lorenzo unable to keep up with Rossi's pace.

But with 13 laps left in the 30-lap race, with a gap of 2.4 seconds from the Italian, Lorenzo began edging closer and closer to his rival. The gap, however stayed around one second for the last three laps, with Rossi taking second at the flag.

Colin Edwards (Tech 3 Yamaha) had a fine race to fourth ahead of Nicky Hayden's Ducati, with Elias finishing sixth.

But the best impression in the race was probably made by Ben Spies, who in his fourth MotoGP race as a wildcard and his first for Yamaha, finished a brilliant seventh, passing several riders including Honda's Andrea Dovizioso six laps from the end.

The Italian thus finished eighth, ahead of Pramac Ducati's Mika Kallio, with Gresini Honda's Alex de Angelis completing the top ten.

Pos  Rider             Team             Time/Gap
 1.  Dani Pedrosa      Honda            46m47.553s
 2.  Valentino Rossi   Yamaha           + 2.630s
 3.  Jorge Lorenzo     Yamaha           + 2.913s
 4.  Colin Edwards     Tech 3 Yamaha    + 32.515s
 5.  Nicky Hayden      Ducati           + 34.585s
 6.  Toni Elias        Gresini Honda    + 34.888s
 7.  Ben Spies         Yamaha           + 37.706s
 8.  Andrea Dovizioso  Honda            + 38.364s
 9.  Mika Kallio       Pramac Ducati    + 42.491s
10.  Alex de Angelis   Gresini Honda    + 43.689s
11.  Randy de Puniet   LCR Honda        + 46.018s
12.  James Toseland    Tech 3 Yamaha    + 50.226s
13.  Aleix Espargaro   Pramac Ducati    + 57.168s
14.  Loris Capirossi   Suzuki           + 1m06.877s
15.  Chris Vermeulen   Suzuki           + 1m11.701s
16.  Gabor Talmacsi    Scot Honda       + 1m14.405s
17.  Marco Melandri    Hayate Kawasaki  + 1m33.425s

Retirements:

     Casey Stoner      Ducati           0 laps