Rossi wins Czech GP

Valentino Rossi took the win at round 10 of the MotoGP world championship in Brno after a scintillating race that went right down to the line.

The race was dominated by a five way tousle between Troy Bayliss, Valentino Rossi, Sete Giberanu, Max Biaggi and Loris Capirossi with all five riders were fighting for the win.

Troy Bayliss stormed away from the second row of the grid to take the hole-shot, making the most of his Ducati’s computer controlled launch system that prevents the front wheel from lifting under the massive accelerations of a race start.

The Australian lead for over half the distance but Rossi was continuously challenging for first place, taking the lead several times only to run wide on the next corner and give it back to Bayliss. Rossi was pushing his Honda so hard he regularly had the front in the air while spinning the rear tyre out of corners.

He finally managed to take the lead on lap 11 with Gibernau moving through with him but the pair couldn’t shake off of Bayliss’ Ducati.

Rossi made a mistake on lap 14, ran wide and slipped back to fourth letting Bayliss take back the lead, but it didn’t last long and the last corner on lap 16 saw Rossi back challenging with all three bike spread out across the track. Rossi came out on top but Gibernau was right on his tail.

Both Rossi and Gibernau were riding right on the edge in the last five laps. Both made mistakes and the lead swapped several times but Rossi held it going in to the last lap and crossed the line less than a bike length in front, just 0.042 seconds separating the two Hondas.

Bayliss crossed the line just 0.6 seconds down to take his third GP podium.

Loris Capirossi was putting in a good show in the top five but had to retire from fourth place on lap 19 when the engine on his Ducati gave out. Max Biaggi was also in the lead group but lost his edge when the pace heated up and ended the race in fifth.

Carlos Checa put in a good race to finish in fourth place over five seconds behind Rossi.

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