Dani Pedrosa continued his great qualifying form with his third pole position of the year after recording the fastest ever motorcycle lap of Donington. The top 15 riders in the grid in fact were inside the race lap record set by Colin Edwards in 2004.

Marco Melandri got a great run of the line and led the field through turn one with Pedrosa and Vermeulen close behind while Casey Stoner got an awesome start from the third row to be up to fifth place just behind the Suzuki of John Hopkins.  Vermeulen was then pushed back to fourth by his team-mate and was then further relegated to fifth place by Stoner.  Roberts, Capirossi and Hayden were also looking strong. 

Stoner was the fastest man on the track in the second lap to pull away from Vermeulen and was starting to chase down Hopkins. Up front Pedrosa was right with Melandri but the whole leading group were still quite tight. 

Pedrosa was all over the bacK of Melandri but ran in too close to the back of the Italian on lap five and had to take avoiding action which cost him a lot of time. Hopkins was coming on strong and had closed right up on the Honda pair and moved up to second after Pedrosa's mistake. Stoner had also made a small error which had seen him shuffled back to fifth place by a charging Kenny Roberts who put in a new fastest lap of the race on lap seven.  Nicky Hayden took to the grass briefly on lap seven and lost a number of positions.  Lap eight saw Pedrosa get back in front of Hopkins but the leading quartet were still fairly close with only a few bike lengths between each combatant while Stoner was a little further behind in fifth.  Next best was Valentino Rossi in sixth place a couple of seconds behind Stoner and just ahead of Vermeulen, Capirossi, Nakano, Edwards, Hayden and De Puniet.

Pedrosa took the lead from Melandri on lap 12 but Kenny Roberts had arrived right on the back of them to start threatening also. While Casey Stoner was getting stronger again to close right onto the tail of Hopkins and slipped past the Suzuki man on lap 12 to move back up to fourth place. Stoner immediately pulled away from Hopkins to start closing on Roberts and Melandri but Pedrosa now had some clear air out in front and immediately used that to good effect to start really pulling away from Melandri.

Rossi moved past Hopkins to take fifth place as the race hit its halfway mark while Shinya Nakano's Kawasaki called it a day and the Japanese rider was forced to park his green machine against the fence and start his walk back to the pits.

Pedrosa walked away from his pursuers and the battle of interest then became the fight for second place where Melandri still held a slim advantage over Roberts and Stoner. 

Vermeulen lost the front on lap 16. He quickly remounted but returned to the pits with a damaged machine. His Rizla Suzuki squad got him going again but it was going to be an uphill battle for the Australian to take any decent points from Donington.

Rossi joined the battle for second place on lap 21 after working his way onto the back of the group.  Stoner had moved up to third place after getting the better of Roberts. A couple of laps later Stoner then also got the better of Melandri.  Meanwhile Rossi had got a taste for the battle and declared his intentions by getting past Stoner and then Melandri to move up to second place.  Up front though Pedrosa had done a disappearing act and was looking untouchable with a seven second advantage over that battle for second place.

With a couple of laps to go Pedrosa backed off his pace a little in the comfort of his considerable buffer.  Things were far from settled for second place however with Rossi having to get his Yamaha extremely sideways in order to keep Marco Melandri at bay. That pair had managed to get away from Stoner who was looking safe for fourth.

On the final lap Melandri got Rossi for second place but a few corners later ran very wide and allowed Rossi to slip back through and the reigning world champion brought his Yamaha home for second place. An awesome performance by Pedrosa however, the young Spaniard a true class act and the victory strengthened the Repsol HRC 1-2 at the top of the championship table. Hayden's seventh place still nets him good points but Pedrosa has managed to whittle the gap between the pair down to 26 points as the championship passes its halfway point.  Rossi's second place promoted him to third place in the series and the reigning World Champion is only 9 points behind Pedrosa and still in the hunt for the title.  Melandri is four points shy of Rossi and is clearly also still a threat for the championship.  The injured Loris Capirossi has now slipped to fifth in the standings but is also still in with a shot and holds a 16 point buffer over sixth placed Stoner who in turn has an 18 point advantage over Colin Edwards.

The Championship reconvenes in a fortnights time in Germany at the Sachsenring with round ten of the 17 round series being played out in front of a typically huge German crowd.

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