In a great weekend for Spanish sport, 23-year-old Jorge Lorenzo won his home MotoGP round in Catalunya on a Yamaha on Sunday after the Spanish football team beat Paraguay in Johannesburg on Saturday to progress to a Soccer World Cup semi-final meeting with Germany.

It was the Spaniard’s third win in a row (he became the first Yamaha rider to win three successive premier class races from pole position since Eddie Lawson in 1986) and he is now well on the way to his first premier class motorcycling world championship.  He leads compatriot Dani Pedrosa by 52 points (a clear two wins and two points advantage) after seven of 18 rounds.

Lorenzo crossed the line a comfortable 4,7 sec ahead of Pedrosa (Honda), who in turn was just two tenths of a second in front of Australian Casey Stoner (Ducati) after an exciting battle for the runner-up spot.  It was the same podium as in the previous round at Assen in Holland.

Fourth place went to a resurgent Randy de Puniet (Honda) in his best ride of the season with rookie Alvaro Bautista (Suzuki) also having his best day on his Suzuki and finishing fifth.

Reigning Superbike world champion Ben Spies (Yamaha) was sixth with Loris Capirossi (Suzuki), Nicky Hayden (Ducati), Marco Melandri (Honda) and Hector Barbera (Aspar) all finishing in the top 10.

Lorenzo leads the championship with 165 points ahead of Pedrosa (113) and Dovizioso (91).  Hayden, De Puniet and Stoner all went ahead of the absent world champion Valentino Rossi to fill positions four to six.  Rossi is recovering from surgery to a broken leg and is aiming to return in time for round 10 at Brno in the Czech Republic on August 15.