Indianapolis victory for Simoncelli

In the first and last ever 250cc race at Indianapolis, a good performance by World Champion Marco Simoncelli (Metis Gilera) kept his championship hopes alive as he crossed the line in first place, two seconds ahead of current standings leader Hiroshi Aoyama (Scot Racing Team).

With the cancellation of last year’s 250cc contest at Indy due bad weather and the arrival of the new Moto2 class next season, this was a one-off race and Simoncelli wrote his name into the history books with his fourth win of 2009.

Ahead of his home event next weekend at Misano, the Italian did a great job from third on the grid, having crashed three times on Saturday, to claw back some extra crucial points in his title defence. Simoncelli now trails the Japanese rider by 27 points with five races remaining.

Aoyama suffered a big front end moment with four laps to go and dropped back from Simoncelli, but he is still consistently scoring points. Álvaro Bautista (Mapfre Aspar Team) lost ground in the championship as he finished third, though he remains second in the standings, 16 points behind Aoyama.

Pole man Mike di Meglio (Mapfre Aspar) was fourth, 12 seconds back on Simoncelli, whilst Roberto Locatelli (also Metis Gilera) and Héctor Barberá (Pepe World Team) were fifth and sixth.

Lukas Pesek (Auto Kelly – CP), Héctor Faubel (Valencia CF - Honda SAG), Thomas Luthi (Emmi - Caffe Latte) and Karel Abraham (Cardion AB Motoracing) all featured in the top ten.

There were crashes in the early stages for Jules Cluzel (Matteoni Racing), who had qualified fifth and was in the lead when he suffered his accident, and Mattia Pasini (Team Toth Aprilia) who had started in seventh on the grid.