Despite being unable to repeat their historic double podium finish of one week ago, Australian motorcycle grand prix racers Casey Stoner and Anthony West have declared themselves happy with their top-10 performances in the German 250cc GP.

Stoner finished seventh on his Aprilia at the Sachsenring circuit and held on to second in the world championship, while West was 10th aboard his new KTM machine.

Spaniard Dani Pedrosa extended his lead to 50 points over Stoner with his fifth win of the season, finishing 7.940 seconds ahead of San Marino rider Alex De Angelis with Japan’s Hiroshi Aoyama third.

With Stoner hampered by an injured right hand and both getting off to poor starts, the Australian pair was unable to stay with the lead group in the 29-lap race but were still satisfied with their race pace.

“I am quite happy overall with the race today,” Stoner said.

“I made a bad start which unfortunately put me in the position of trying to pass slower riders. The lead group was very fast straight away and it took three to four laps to break free from the other riders. From then on my pace and the lead group’s pace were very similar so it was hard to pull them in.

“If things had been different in the opening stages I think I would have been able to stick it in there with them.”

Having remained injury-free for the first half of the year, Stoner suffered bruising to his right hand after a crash during practice, but with the season now taking a four-week break, he will have plenty of time to return to full fitness for the Czech GP at Brno on August 28.

“I had a bit of a problem going into the right-handers under brakes. There was a lot of pressure on the inside of my right hand. It was a little bit disappointing that happened as well.

“I’ll go home to Australia, get my hand right, train a bit and get myself ready for Brno.

“We had a test there after the Dutch GP and everything seemed to be going quite smoothly, so hopefully we can just continue our progress from here through to there and end up with a better result.”

Stoner’s closet rival in the 250cc championship, Italian Andrea Dovizioso, was fourth at the Sachsenring and now lies just seven points behind the Australian, setting the scene for an intense battle in the remaining seven races, including the Polini Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix at Victoria’s Phillip Island on October 14-16.

After finishing second on debut for KTM in the rain-lashed British GP one week ago, West, 24, from the Gold Coast, found himself battling through the pack after dropping from 12th to 19th on the first lap.

“The clutch ‘bogged’ at the start and I lost a lot of time,” West said.

“There aren’t many places to pass at this track so I pushed hard in the first few laps to make up some positions. By the time I got up to 10th the guys in front had put a gap on me and I couldn’t catch up.

“During the race I also had problems with the rear sliding and ‘spinning up’, especially on the exits of the turns. The bike is predictable so I could control it, but I wasn’t moving forward. (Yuki) Takahashi caught and passed me near the end. I tried to get him back, but I couldn’t.”

West missed most of the first half of the season while waiting for the KTM to be race ready, but has quickly proved his competitiveness.

“These two races we’ve done at Donington (in Britain) and here have given our team valuable direction on the bike and what we need to do to improve. The other factory teams have done a lot of testing and half a season of racing, so I think what we’ve done so far is pretty good. When KTM do something they do it properly.

“We’ve now got the mid-season break and KTM are going to work on engine development, the clutch, and a few other things. It looks like we may test for a couple of days straight after the next race at Brno.”

In the premier MotoGP class, Italian star Valentino Rossi clinched his eighth win of the season and the 76th of his GP career, profiting from a last-lap slip-up by Spaniard Sete Gibernau.

Australian Troy Bayliss crashed out of the first part of the two-part race which was stopped after five laps when American John Hopkins performed a massive high-side leaving his Suzuki machine in the middle of the track.

“When things are going wrong there’s not too much to say except I’m sorry,” said Bayliss, who started from 16th on the grid but slid out on lap two while trying to make his way through the field.

“The weekend hadn’t been going at all bad until qualifying. We were able to sort out the situation though because in the warm-up I felt good with the bike and the tyres and so I was confident for the race. Then I got caught up in the confusion at the first corner where several riders crashed out and I went really wide, almost stopping. I put my head down and tried to recover, and got good draught off (Makoto) Tamada but as I tried to pass him I went into the corner a bit too hard.”

American Nicky Hayden celebrated his 24th birthday by clinching pole position for the factory Honda team at Sachsenring, just three weeks after scoring his maiden MotoGP win at his home GP at Laguna Seca, California.

Having led from pole for the opening five laps until Hopkins’ crash, Hayden’s lead in the second 25-lap race lasted only one lap before he was passed by Gibernau and Rossi.

As Rossi piled the pressure on Gibernau, the Spaniard make a mistake under braking for the first corner of the final lap, handing victory to the Yamaha rider by 0.685 seconds, with Hayden third.

Italian Max Biaggi and Brazilian Alex Barros were fourth and fifth respectively on their Hondas, while Japan’s Shinya Nakano was sixth for Kawasaki.

While Rossi has a seemingly unassailable lead on 120 points over compatriot Marco Melandri – who was a disappointing seventh at Sachsenring – the battle for the runners-up position is heating up.

Just three points separate the next four places with Melandri on 116, Gibernau 115, American Colin Edwards 114 and Biaggi 113. Bayliss is 11th on 47 points.

Finnish rider Mika Kallio was handed his second victory after starting from his seventh pole position of the season when the 125cc race was stopped with just six laps remaining.

A crash for former world champion Manuel Poggiali, from San Marino, saw the red flags emerge on the 21st lap, when Kallio was leading from Swiss rider Thomas Luthi and Italian Marco Simoncelli.

Luthi now leads the championship by three points from Kallio, 119-116, with Hungarian Gabor Talmacsi third on 113 and Simoncelli fourth on 101.