 1 Laguna Seca, Monterey California |
 2 The best race of the season had two incredible tales to tell: the complete failure of Michelin to provide competitive tyres and Rossi developing a strategy to beat the all-conquering Stoner. Stoner had been fastest in all sessions and had taken his fifth pole. When asked what he needed to do to beat Stoner, Rossi replied "a 30 second start". |
 3 Stoner got a brilliant start and led into turn 1 but Hayden pushed Rossi back to third. Rossi had the inside line, immediately passed Hayden on turn 2 and set off after Casey. Rossi executed a remarkable pass at the corkscrew, turn 8, and moved into the lead. Lorenzo high sided at turn 5 and broke his ankles again. Rossi maintained the lead until lap 3. |
 4 After morning warmup, Rossi's crew chief Jerry Burgess found the extra 3/10ths that Valentino needed to compete so that in some parts of the track he was faster than Stoner. Stoner was in awesome form though and he was clearly the fastest rider; he (and everyone else) expected another run-away win. |
 5 Lap 4, the most remarkable lap of a remarkable race. Stoner passed Rossi on the Andretti hairpin, turn 2, then Rossi took back the lead at turn 5 only for Stoner to ride around the outside of him at turn 6 and take the lead again. Stoner led up the hill to the corkscrew, turn 8. Then Rossi pulled this brilliant, audacious move on Stoner that pretty much won him the race and the 2008 championship. Stoner was enraged and let it show. |
 6 After five laps had passed, the lead had already changed hands seven times and the pair had a 3½ second lead over third place. For 23 laps Rossi and Stoner duelled with no quarter given by either. On lap 24 Casey let his anger get the better of him and he ran wide and fell off in the gravel. The pair had built up a 22 second lead over Chris Vermeulen in third so that Casey had time to remount and continue in second place. |
 7 Meanwhile, Rossi coasted home and took his first win at Laguna Seca. As for the Michelin riders, they had a disastrous day. Pedrosa attempted to ride with his broken wrist but decided that in conjunction with the tyres, it was not worth the few points he might gain and did not start. |
 8 Casey refused to shake Valentino's hand in parc fermé, continued his outburst on the podium, let fly during TV interviews & again at the press conference. His churlish & unsporting remarks endeared him to no one and, as future events would reveal, Rossi had claimed another psychological victim. Casey dropped 5 points to Valentino in the championship instead of taking back 5 points as was widely expected. Pedrosa's season was all but over with last week's DNF and today's DNS. |
 9 Kropotkin's Laguna Seca race review |
