Aragon MotoGP Betting: Stoner to reassert dominance

Moto GP / Trent Burton / 17 September 2011 /

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Can you see past a Casey Stoner win?

"Worryingly for the other riders, Stone enjoys Aragon and he's in a good mood..."

Trent Burton reports from Aragon where Casey Stoner has been dominating practice sessions - when the teams can get out on the track that is

This weekend MotoGP heads back to Spain, and Aragon, where we've already had something a little out of the ordinary.

Practice yesterday afternoon was cancelled, not for the weather as we've seen in the past, but for a failure at a local sub station. What this meant was that there was no power to the entire circuit which resulted in no practice for the entire afternoon and a lot of annoyed riders. As such we've had little to go on until an extended session run this morning.

And when the dust settled it was Casey Stoner who controlled it. For most of the morning he was basically a full second quicker than anyone else.

Dani Pedrosa closed the gap to a couple of tenths in the last few minutes but that did more to mask Stoner's dominance than anything else. Stoner put down nearly ten laps quicker than anyone else could manage for even one flyer. As such Stoner is a [2.14] clear favourite right now and it's hard to see past that. That's not just based on his lap times today either. He needs to bounce back after a disappointing third in Misano where he suffered from fatigue. He says he's rested up well in the last fortnight and wants to stamp his authority back on 2011 this weekend. More worryingly for the other riders, Stone enjoys Aragon and he's in a good mood...

But whenever we lose a session the reality of things can get a little muddied. There's every chance Stoner just found a setting that worked well straight away and everyone else is a session behind in working their way up to speed. Jorge Lorenzo, in particular, struggled today and ended the morning in an almost unbelievable eight position. As such he's as long as [4.3] for a win. Despite that excellent price, I'm not tempted as I just can't see a Lorenzo win here. It's not a track the Yamaha likes, nor Jorge, and all the Hondas have been extremely strong thus far. He has drifted to [1.8] for a Top 3 however and that's well worth a look as there's no way Lorenzo will be running around in 8th come Sunday.

Stoner's biggest threat this weekend will come from his team-mate Pedrosa. So long as he can hang with Stoner in the early laps and not let the Australian race off into the distance he's a good chance to give him a race. As we saw last time out, there's no team orders at Repsol Honda. If Pedrosa can beat Stoner, he will. This isn't F1. At [3.2] he represents very good value as the only person with a shot at stopping Stoner tomorrow.

Last year in Aragon, Stoner won on the Ducati. But a year's a long time in sport and this year Valentino Rossi's arrived with another newly revised Ducati featuring some new aluminium components in the front of the frame. The bike's definitely better, and Rossi is closer to the front than he has been but he's still a second a lap off the top two Hondas. For a while many people have thought Aragon a tipping point for Rossi, given Stoner's success on the same bike here last year, but I cannot fathom any way that he can make the podium. Next season can't come quickly enough for the Bologna-based team.

So it's up to Pedrosa to keep the race for the win interesting, because as it stands right now, things are looking like another Stoner cakewalk. Everyone else is quite probably hoping for another power failure, although preferably just one in the #27 garage,

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