Stoner Wins Qatar Moto GP

So Casey Stoner got off to a winning start in the opening race off the season in Qatar with some quality riding.

Reigning champion Jorge Lorenzo pulled away from Dani Pedrosa to take 2nd place after a race long battle.

Valentino Rossi finished 7th on his Ducati but he's still clearly struggling to get the best out of the bike.

Stoner was different class, made that look easy. In fact it was pretty easy, even to the point where he was trailing behind Dani Pedrosa "Just to see what he had"! Lorenzo did well to separate the Hondas, his reaction afterwards shows that was a victory in itself, although Pedrosa said afterwards that he's carrying some sort of injury to his left arm that hampered him as the race wore on.

Rossi's going to struggle early on but if anyone can turn that Ducati into a race winning bike, it's the Doctor. Well done to Cal Crutchlow as well, getting some good points in his debut race.

Going by testing, qualifying and the race the others are just going to have to try and hang on to the coat-tails of Honda and hope that as they develop their bikes through the season there's not too big a gap to make up, but that's not to say that Honda won't develop during the season.

Crutchlow was unlucky, he would've placed higher had it not been for Edward's mistake.

And flipping Randy De Puniet crashed out on the first lap! Gutted!

Yeah, was unlucky! Elias' crash was nasty!

That was a bad one!

Steve Parrish was hilarious though as the bike tumbled along:

"50.......100.......150.......200. Yep there's about 200 grand's worth of damage there!"

A good race to start the season.Felt sorry for Pedrosa, his left arm was giving him trouble for the latter part of the race.He must have felt gutted when Lorenzo went past him and he couldn't do anything about it. There is still a long way to go and I'm sure Rossi will make improvements on the Ducati.