Motorcycling: Stoner employs new tactic to hold off Rossi's challenge

Casey Stoner yesterday revealed his strategy for dealing with the MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi after the 21-year-old Australian prodigy won the Catalunya round and opened up a 14-point lead in the championship.

"You have to give it right back to him the way he gives it to you," Stoner said after climbing from his 800cc Marlboro Ducati Desmosedici GP7. It was a philosophy that Stoner - who is almost the Lewis Hamilton of MotoGP - put into effect when Rossi tried to pressure him into making a mistake as they waged an epic battle on the 2.9-mile Barcelona track.

Stoner led a freight train made up of Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda), Rossi (Fiat Yamaha) and John Hopkins (Rizla Suzuki) in the opening laps. On lap 11 Rossi pounced into second place and started his thoroughly legal but potentially disorienting games.

He probed, he pushed and he tested, but Stoner remained centimetre perfect. On lap 18 of 25 Rossi twice passed Stoner, but each time the Aussie spat like a cat and squeezed back in front. On lap 22 Rossi swooped ahead again and tried to open a gap so that Stoner would not be able to overwhelm him with the Ducati's superior power on the sprint to the flag.

But on lap 23 Stoner used that speed advantage of around six mph - he touched 199mph on Barcelona's kilometre-long straight compared to Rossi's 193mph - to float past his rival as they braked into the first turn. Then he maintained an advantage of a few bike lengths so Rossi never had a chance to attempt a desperate last-lap lunge.

"The Ducati is perfect under braking, so I was able to go late into the corners to make him run wide," Stoner said. "We had been having problems with the bike going into corners but have made improvements and it is nice to be competitive again at European rounds."

Rossi said: "On the last lap I was too much at the limit to try to pass. We have to try something better with the bike."

Stoner has expressed irritation at the way his string of victories is often credited solely to the Ducati's power. He is right: in Rossi's six-years at the top of MotoGP, no one has responded to him with the fearlessness and steadiness that Stoner, who is in his second season of premier-class racing, is displaying.

Pedrosa and Hopkins finished third and fourth, and the Frenchman Randy de Puniet brought his Kawasaki in fifth, despite suffering from a swollen left knee after a crash in Italy the previous week.

The 250cc world champion, Jorge Lorenzo, continued his domination of his class when he won his fifth race of the season with an authoritative flag-to-flag victory. The 20-year-old Spaniard, who had started on pole position for the fifth time this year, crossed the line comfortably ahead of another Aprilia rider, Alex de Angelis of San Marino.

Italy's Andrea Dovizioso was third on a Honda and former 125cc world champion Thomas Luethi took fourth spot on another Aprilia, ahead of the Spaniard Alvaro Bautista. Ireland's Eugene Laverty came home 19th, outside the points.

Lorenzo is 36 points clear of Dovizioso in the championship standings, with De Angelis on the Italian's heels a further two points back.

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