Italian MotoGP: Valentino Rossi in seventh heaven after Mugello win

Valentino Rossi scored his seventh successive victory in front of his home crowd in Mugello today to extend his MotoGP world championship lead to 12-points.

In front of a massive crowd of over 96,000 fans, Rossi preserved his unbeaten record on a four-stroke machine in Mugello with a dominant victory.

His comfortable win over reigning world champion Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa was the first time he’s collected three successive wins since 2005, and his win ended a 17-year winning streak for Michelin at Mugello.

Starting from pole for the first time in almost a year, Rossi disposed of Pedrosa on lap three and Stoner a lap later and he never looked threatened from that point, easing off at the end to win by over two seconds.

The 29-year-old factory Yamaha rider said: “After winning the championship, winning at Mugello is the next best thing for me and once again today it was like a dream.

“There is no way to describe the feeling I have standing on the podium in front of all of my fans here and I am so happy that I could win once again today. To win for the seventh time running at my home track is amazing but I felt quite a lot of pressure about this, so it’s a relief as well because I didn’t want to disappoint everyone!

“It’s been a hard weekend for everyone because of the bad weather and the lack of dry track time, but my crew have done a fantastic job with the bike and my M1 was wonderful today.

“Once I got to the front I was able to make a gap from the others but towards the end it was unbelievably hot and it became quite hard to ride. I wanted to ease off a bit but Casey was pushing hard behind so I had to keep going.

“Thanks to all of my team, to the engineers and of course to Bridgestone! I’m really glad that I’ve been the one to give them their first win at this track and they did a great job today because my tyre worked virtually the same from start to finish.

“It’s been a fantastic day, it’s always one of the best moments of the year for me and now we’ve made a bit more of the gap at the top of the championship so things couldn’t be better. Honestly after this weekend I think I would like to go to bed for five days but now we have to go straight to Barcelona!”