Dani Pedrosa kept his
MotoGP title hopes alive with a dominant victory over world championship leader
Jorge Lorenzo in Sunday's Aragon Grand Prix.
The race looked to be shaping up to be a repeat of the Brno battle - decided in Pedrosa's favour at the final turn - as the pair broke quickly away from the rest of the field.
But victory was effectively decided when Pedrosa passed Lorenzo on lap 7 of 23, with Lorenzo then losing touch after a near highside on the exit of turn one. Pedrosa won by 6.4s.
Pedrosa's fourth victory of the season has trimmed Lorenzo's title lead - which had mushroomed after Pedrosa's Misano disaster - to 33 points, with four rounds and 100 points remaining.
While the two Spaniards maintained position for much of the race, the fight for third entertained the fans right to the end.
Initially a four-way contest, rookie Stefan Bradl made an early exit when he lost the front of his LCR Honda. That left an all-Yamaha contest between Ben Spies,
Andrea Dovizioso and Cal Crutchlow.
Spies had dropped away as the last lap began, but with Tech 3 riders Dovizioso and Crutchlow still fighting furiously.
Crutchlow's final challenge was a block pass on Dovizioso on the entry to the back straight, but Dovizioso squared-off the turn and rode by the Englishman on the exit to claim his sixth rostrum of the year.
Alvaro Bautista was unable to repeat his Misano podium heroics for Gresini Honda, but made solid progress to rise from twelfth on the grid to sixth, some 14s behind Spies.
Jonathan Rea's second
MotoGP appearance, in place of
Casey Stoner at Repsol Honda, saw the
WSBK star start and finish in seventh place - one position higher than he had managed at Misano.
Factory Ducati team-mates
Nicky Hayden and
Valentino Rossi both suffered off-track incidents.
Rossi brushed the side of Rea under-braking at the end of the back straight on the opening lap, sending the Italian down an escape road and leaving him in last place.