 1 Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana, USA |
 2 The first motorcycle race at Indianapolis was in 1909. The next motorcycle race was 99 years later when the MotoGP bikes returned. |
 3 Rossi broke Stoner's seven pole streak and took pole. Stoner started second and Lorenzo was third. FP and qualifying were heavily impacted by the tail of Hurricane Ike that was battering the Texas coast. Friday was hit by storms, Saturday was dry, and on race day the storms returned. The 125 race was red-flagged and the 250's were postponed to allow the MotoGP bikes to race before the weather worsened. |
 4 Stoner got away to a blazing start with Nicky Hayden and Andrea Dovizioso demoting a cautious Rossi to fourth. At the end of lap 2, Rossi was in fifth place behind Lorenzo. |
 5 On lap 3 Rossi passed team mate Lorenzo to take third behind Dovizioso and Hayden. By lap 6, Rossi had worked his way back up to second behind Nicky Hayden while Stoner dropped to fifth. |
 6 By lap 9, Hayden still held the lead closely followed by Rossi. Lorenzo had worked his way into third while Dovizio held onto fourth. Pedrosa above had his first race on Bridgestones and was in seventh place. AMA champion and Suzuki wild-card rider Ben Spies was riding well in sixth and was demolishing the two factory Suzuki riders. |
 7 The race was a normal wet race for the first ten laps and then it began to rain heavily and become windy. Rossi carefully closed the gap to Hayden and passed him on lap 13 as the weather worsened. |
 8 On lap 16 with it raining heavily and the wind increasing, Valentino put in the top speed of the race: an astounding 296.7 km/h. By lap 20 the race was red flagged with Valentino in the lead. IRTA, Dorna and the rider safety committee (Rossi and Stoner) decided the conditions were far too dangerous to continue and the race was declared. |
 9 Rossi had won his fourth race in a row and now had an 87 point advantage over Stoner with four races left to run. Hayden claimed his first podium of a wretched season and Lorenzo claimed his first wet podium - ever. That included all of his 125 and 250 races going back to when he competed in the Spanish Championship. Stoner held a 7 point advantage over Pedrosa making the fight for second interesting. |
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