Repsol Honda rider Dani Pedrosa rode immaculately to secure a dominant win in the German Grand Prix today, setting the five fastest laps of a shortened race at the Sachsenring and setting a new lap record along the way. It was Pedrosa’s second victory of the 2010 season and his tenth since he moved up to the MotoGP class with Repsol Honda in 2006. The win for the 24-year-old Spaniard closed the gap in the World Championship standings by five points to Jorge Lorenzo, who finished second today. Pedrosa’s team-mate Andrea Dovizioso fought to a valiant fifth place today - in a race which was restarted and reduced to 21 laps after a crash brought out the red flag - halting the race.

Pedrosa and his Honda RC212V looked very strong all weekend at the Sachsenring and were clearly the fastest combination this afternoon. In the first part of the race Pedrosa and Lorenzo took off at the front, with Lorenzo fractions of a second ahead when the red flag came out on lap 10 after a crash involving Randy De Puniet, Alvaro Bautista, and Aleix Espargaro, during which De Puniet was unfortunate to suffer a broken leg.

At the restart, Pedrosa took the lead into the first corner and led lap one before being demoted by Lorenzo to second place, where he stayed in close attendance for eight more laps. At the end of lap nine, Pedrosa made his decisive move, getting a better drive out of the final corner and sliding alongside Lorenzo on the start-finish straight before holding a tight line into turn one. From that moment he never looked back and relentlessly stretched away at the front to win by 3.355s. It was Pedrosa’s second MotoGP win at Sachsenring, following on from his victory in 2007 when he won by a huge 13.166s margin. On the podium today, Pedrosa wore the shirt of the Spanish national football team in homage to Spain’s victory in last weekend’s World Cup final in South Africa.

DANI PEDROSA – 1st – World Championship position 2nd 138 points

“I’m very happy because we are back winning races and it’s a great feeling. It wasn’t easy today because when the race is stopped and restarted like that, sometimes you don’t have the same feeling on the machine in the second part. Also you get nervous again on the grid and it’s possible you won’t have the same pace after the restart. But it went very well for us in both races. In the first one I was very close to Lorenzo and the pace was good, but then they stopped the race and we looked at each other saying, “Why?”. It was even better in the second part. We just made one small change with the rear suspension to get a bit more traction, but we didn’t change the tyre because we didn’t have any new tyres left - we went with the same ones. I made another good start and in the first laps after Lorenzo had passed me I was pushing very to try to take him back. I couldn’t do it with my first attempt, but when I got a second chance I just went for it. Then it was a great feeling to stretch ahead and get the victory - the team deserve it. This victory is even better than the one in Italy because at Mugello I just went away in front and there was no battle with anybody, but here I was battling with Lorenzo in the first and second race, and finally beat him, so this is even more important. Also before the race we were not 100 per cent sure about what the weather would do, but it stayed clear and finally the weekend has ended perfectly. I was really looking forward to wear the Spain shirt on the podium. It was difficult to get it because it wasn’t in the shops and I really wanted to celebrate a win like that. I also want to thank the team because they worked really well this weekend, the bike was very good from Friday onwards and this is the form we need so we can to keep this consistency going from now on.”

Jorge Lorenzo finishing second and his resurgent Fiat Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi rounding off a remarkable return from injury to finish fourth by a mere whisker. A red flag after nine laps meant the race was restarted, with Dani Pedrosa eventually taking the win after a 21-lap ‘second' race.

Starting from pole for the fourth race in a row, Lorenzo lost ground to Pedrosa at the start but retook the lead on the first lap and led the way by a couple of tenths for the first nine laps. Rossi meanwhile, back racing just six weeks after breaking his leg, had dropped two places on his grid position to seventh. On the second lap he passed Hector Barbera and then loomed up behind Marco Simoncelli, passing his fellow Italian to take fifth on lap four. The World Champion had more than a second's gap to Andrea Dovizioso but he quickly started to close down on him and was in range on the ninth lap, passing him on the tenth. By then however an incident involving three riders had caused the race to be red-flagged and, with positions then taken from the end of the ninth lap, that left the top five in almost their original grid order of Lorenzo, Pedrosa, Stoner, Dovizioso and Rossi.

Thirteen riders restarted the race and it was the same story all over again, with Pedrosa passing Lorenzo into turn one but the championship-leader getting back through before the end of the first lap. The next few laps saw the two Spanish riders in some superb wheel-to-wheel action as Lorenzo tried and failed to shake Pedrosa off, the pair maintaining a nail-biting distance of about a tenth for several laps. After three wins in a row however Lorenzo finally succumbed today and on lap nine he was unable to hold his compatriot off any longer, sensibly deciding to bring his M1 home in second place for 20 points. The 23-year-old has now finished in first or second place at every one of the eight rounds this season.

JORGE LORENZO - Position: 2nd Time: +3.355
"It's always difficult when a race is split like this and I think I didn't ride quite as well in the second race as I felt I had been doing in the first. Dani was very, very strong and I was on the limit trying to stay ahead. When he passed me I tried briefly to stay with him but he was much faster than me today and I was going to have to take a lot of risks to stay with him; the safest thing for me to do was finish second and take 20 points for the championship. I am happy because I never really liked this track and now I've been second here two years in a row. Now we go to Laguna and I am very excited about racing there again."

Casey Stoner picked up his third podium finish in as many races at Sachsenring today with a stunning fight for third position, which wasn’t decided until the last corner. The Australian started from second on the grid and was running in third place when a crash further down the order led to a red flag and restart after nine laps.

Nicky Hayden had made a stunning start to the first race, charging from fifteenth on the grid to ensure sixth spot on the reformed grid. He made up another position in the second race but was unlucky to be passed by two riders after losing the front of his Desmosedici GP10 just three laps from the end, leaving him in an otherwise creditable seventh. Stoner held third for much of the 21-lap affair but a late challenge from Valentino Rossi saw the pair swap positions several times before Stoner made his decisive move at the bottom of the ‘Waterfall’ section.

CASEY STONER (Ducati Marlboro Team)  3rd
“In the first part of the race I didn’t have such a good feeling and I was doing everything I could to stay with Dani and Jorge but tenth by tenth they were pulling away from me. So, for the second part of the race we changed to a tyre we’d already used yesterday and I immediately found more grip and was able to run faster lap times. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get past Dovi at the start so the front two opened a gap and by the time I got up to third place they were gone. We saw in the first race that Valentino’s pace was a little better than ours and that proved to be the case again in the second race. He was taking big chunks of time out of me and to be honest once he got past I didn’t think I’d be able to follow. I tried really hard to stay in there and we had a good battle with a lot of nice passes. I tried one last time at the bottom of the hill, where he tried to close the line on me but I was already there. We touched but it was a good, clean fight and I’m just pleased to come away with a podium. We had hoped to be a little closer to the front here but we’re happy with this.”

VALENTINO ROSSI - Position: 4th Time: +5.623
"I didn't expect this! I thought it was maybe possible to make fourth or fifth place but I thought it would be very difficult. In the end I was fourth but I had a great battle with Casey and I was so close to the podium, so this is a fantastic result after missing four races. I need some more kilometres to really recover the feeling and feel completely okay with the bike again, but I think I did a great job and this was a very good comeback, better than we could wish for. I felt a bit of pain in my shoulder but more in the leg when changing direction, but at the end the battle with Casey was such fun that I didn't think about it. Unfortunately though he just got the better of me on the last corner! Thanks to all my team for helping me come back and be competitive like this, we will try to do even better in Laguna."