At one point, his lead margin from championship leader Lorenzo stretched to almost 8 seconds, before the Spaniard decided to lower his pace and crossed the finish line some 4 second ahead of the Yamaha rider. Lorenzo did not have an easy time clinching second however, as he was consistently pressured by Dovizioso from the first few laps.
The Italian rider passed Lorenzo in Lap 4 immediately after the start/finish line, but Lorenzo stroke back and pulled the exact same maneuver over Dovizioso two laps later, in the same spot. From that point on, he never let go of his second place, although Dovizioso was less than one second behind him at all time.
The battle for 4th place was thrilling all the way, as Casey Stoner had a lot of work to do before he passed Marco Melandri and Randy de Puniet. While riding behind the Honda duo for most of the race, the Australian got his Ducati past both of them in the final two laps and, although Melandri repassed him in the last lap, he got him back immediately and finished the race 0.032 seconds ahead of the Italian.
Behind De Puniet’s Honda was Tech 3 Yamaha’s Ben Spies, who scored his second best result this season ahead of Pramac Ducati’s Aleix Espargaro, Gresini Honda’s Marco Simoncelli and Suzuki’s Loris Capirossi.
Ducati’s Nicky Hayden ended his positive streak in the 2010 season with a crash in Lap 6, while caught in a battle for 5th place against Melandri.
With reigning world champion Valentino Rossi out of the MotoGP for the upcoming 6 weeks following his crash in the final practice session of the Mugello weekend, Lorenzo's lead in the overall classification is now of 25 points from Honda's Dani Pedrosa.
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