Valantino Rossi Rules 2009 German MotoGP

Valentino Rossi managed to stay ahead of Jorge Lorenzo and won 2009 German MotoGP in a thrilling late battle at Sachsenring circuit. The Fiat Yamaha riders were only separated by less than one tenth through the finish line, while Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner, who also were in with a chance to win for most of the race ended up around three and ten seconds behind respectively.

The reigning champion Valentino Rossi made a fine start from pole position to keep the lead at the first corner, followed by Pedrosa, which made another super start from eighth on the grid, and Randy de Puniet, who crashed his LCR Honda a few corners later. Stoner took the lead from Rossi on lap seven, two laps after having overtaken Pedrosa for second, but he was not able to open up a gap on Rossi and was passed back by the Italian ten laps later, with Lorenzo also overtaking Stoner on lap 18.

With five laps of the 30-lap race left, the first corner saw Lorenzo taking the lead from Rossi and Pedrosa passing Stoner for third, after which the Australian gave up and was not a factor for the win anymore, while Pedrosa managed to keep the gap around one second for a while longer. Rossi managed to out-brake Lorenzo at the beginning of the penultimate lap, and despite a few attempts by the Spaniard to take the lead back, there was nothing he could with Rossi defending the line on the last lap.