Spain’s Lorenzo takes advantage after top rivals slip up, pulls away for easy Indy win

Lorenzo takes advantage of mistakes, wins at Indy

INDIANAPOLIS — Jorge Lorenzo watched his top two rivals slide off the race course and out of contention Sunday.

All the 22-year-old Spaniard had to do was slip into safe mode at Indianapolis.

Lorenzo took advantage of surprising miscues by pole winner Dani Pedrosa and current points leader Valentino Rossi, pulling away for a 9½-second MotoGP victory over San Marino’s Alex de Angelis — a margin that could have been even wider. American Nicky Hayden was third, nearly 13 seconds off the pace.

“In the last two races, I tried to win and I crashed, so I was a bit disappointed,” he said. “But now today, the situation changed completely. It changed for Valentino and Dani, unfortunately for them.”

Lorenzo resurgence was impressive.

He won for the first time since May 31, ended a two-race streak in which he didn’t finish and trimmed Rossi’s points lead from 50 to 25. It was Lorenzo’s third win of the season and gave Fiat Yamaha, which also employs Rossi, its eighth win in 12 races.

The winning speed, 93.19 mph, was 9 mph faster than Rossi’s winning average in the inaugural Indy race last year — a race held in gusty winds and driving rain.

This time, with cool temperatures and overcast skies, the biggest obstacle for Lorenzo was figuring out how to celebrate. He settled on blending MotoGP tradition with Indy tradition.

As he rolled down the famed front straightaway for the final time, Lorenzo popped a wheelie — a regular occurrence in the MotoGP series but believed to be a first at the 100-year old track.

Then he adopted a routine first used by three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves and later duplicated by two-time Brickyard winner Tony Stewart: He scaled the fence.

“This is the only track you can do that at. I wanted to do some exercises,” Lorenzo joked. “Six laps to go, I was thinking oh no, maybe on the straight, maybe I will not be able to do the wheelie. But every lap, I say ‘OK, maybe I will try.’ “

For Pedrosa and Rossi, The Brickyard ended in frustration.

Pedrosa, of Spain, was the favorite after dominating the speed charts all weekend. He was the fastest in Friday’s rain-soaked practice and again Saturday morning on a dry track. In qualifying, Pedrosa posted the first lap ever under 1 minute, 40 seconds on Indy’s 2.621-mile road course.

But after leading three laps Sunday, the Repsol Honda rider goofed. Pedrosa was dipping down so low through the turns that the side of his knee was nearly touching Indy’s asphalt. In turn 15, it cost him. Pedrosa appeared to go too low, losing the motorcycle from underneath him.

He ran into the grass, fetched the bike and wound up finishing 10th, more than 45 seconds behind Lorenzo.

“I was pushing very hard at the start of the race and perhaps I pushed too much,” Pedrosa said. “There was some cloud cover today and maybe the front tire was a little cooler than before. Whatever the reason, I made a mistake and lost the front.”

Rossi’s miscue was even more shocking.

The six-time MotoGP world champ from Italy has been the series’ most consistent racer with only two non-podium finishes in 11 previous starts.

He inherited the lead after Lorenzo’s accident, but Lorenzo dove under Rossi in the first turn on lap nine and made a nifty pass. On the next lap, when Rossi tried to turn the tables, he also went low and it sent him skidding across the track and into the grass. Some of his team members buried their faces in their hands when they saw it on TV.

Rossi retrieved the bike and briefly rejoined the race before parking his motorcycle in the pits on lap 12. It’s the first time Rossi failed to finish a race since Valencia in 2007.

“I ran wide onto a dirty part of the track at turn one and lost the front,” he said. “I tried to carry on but there was a problem with the throttle. Once he (Pedrosa) fell, I knew it would be between Jorge and I. It would have been better to finish second than not to have finished at all.”

After that, it was Lorenzo.

With Pedrosa and Rossi in the last two spots of the 17-bike field, Lorenzo’s lead immediately went from 0.371 seconds over Rossi to 9.096 seconds over de Angelis.

He was never challenged and the only thing that slowed down Lorenzo was his desire to safely get back in the points race.

“Before the race, I said to the press it was almost impossible,” he said. “After this race, I say difficult, but not impossible.”

Hayden, a Kentucky native with the Ducati Team, had his best finish of the season. Pedrosa’s teammate, Andrea Dovizioso of Italy, and American Colin Edwards, from Houston, was fifth.