Rossi takes dominant Jerez win

The seven-time world champion, starting from second place, managed to take the lead on the first lap from home favourite and pole sitter Dani Pedrosa and never looked back, slowly starting to build a gap on the Spaniard of around three seconds towards the end of the race.

This was the first victory in six races for Rossi, the largest number of consecutive win-less races for 'the Doctor' since his first year in the top class in 2000.

Today's win takes him back to the top of the championship table, and this was celebrated in the parade lap with the Italian pretending to take a bowling throw over his pin-masqueraded friends, who fell down for a spectacular strike.

It was an uneventful race for second place too, with Pedrosa's Honda building a gap of about one second over Rossi's Yamaha teammate Colin Edwards, who was never able to truly worry the Spaniard. The two thus finished in second and third position respectively.

It was a good fight behind this leading trio, however, with Toni Elias taking his Honda Gresini from ninth place on the second lap to fourth at the end.

Elias was caught at the end by Qatar GP winner Casey Stoner. The Ducati rider, starting from fifth place, progressively lost places for the first half of the race and on lap 14 was down to ninth.

He then started making up places to finish in fifth, while teammate Loris Capirossi had another difficult weekend and had to settle for a lowly 12th place.

Carlos Checa ended the race in sixth, followed by Nicky Hayden whose Honda was in fourth place for the fist half of the race before sliding back to seventh.

Marco Melandri, Chris Vermeulen and Shinya Nakano rounded up the top ten.

On the fifth lap Alex Hoffman was shown the black flag for illegally switching to the spare bike before the rainless race.

John Hopkins had a good race to fourth place until the 17th lap, when his Suzuki went wide, lost the front and fell in the gravel.

Kenny Roberts Jr finished the race in 16th place and parked his bike immediately after running out of fuel.

CLASSIFIED:

Pos  Rider             Make      Time
 1.  Valentino Rossi   Yamaha    45:53.340
 2.  Daniel Pedrosa    Honda     +   1.246
 3.  Colin Edwards     Yamaha    +   2.701
 4.  Toni Elías        Honda     +   4.351
 5.  Casey Stoner      Ducati    +   4.993
 6.  Carlos Checa      Honda     +  10.000
 7.  Nicky Hayden      Honda     +  14.146
 8.  Marco Melandri    Honda     +  19.969
 9.  Chris Vermeulen   Suzuki    +  24.786
10.  Shinya Nakano     Honda     +  24.955
11.  Alex Barros       Ducati    +  25.008
12.  Loris Capirossi   Ducati    +  25.852
13.  Randy de Puniet   Kawasaki  +  26.445
14.  Makoto Tamada     Yamaha    +  36.653
15.  Sylvain Guintoli  Yamaha    +  36.744
16.  K.Roberts Jr.     KR        +  48.911
17.  Kousuke Akiyoshi  Suzuki    +  50.784
18.  Olivier Jacque    Kawasaki  +1:00.901
19.  John Hopkins      Suzuki    +1:03.371

NOT CLASSIFIED/RETIREMENTS:

     Rider             Make
     Alex Hofmann      Ducati    Disqualified

Fastest Lap: Valentino Rossi, 1:40.905 on lap 5