Source: http://www.motogp.com/en/node/497782

Australian Casey Stoner has taken out the season opening round in Qatar for the third year in a row after this years edition of the race was delayed by a day due to a freak storm that swept across the circuit prior to the original start time on Sunday night. As a result of the delay I wasn’t actually able to watch the race, so this is just pieced together from what I can find.

The opening round of the 2009 MotoGP season was again a night race (the only on in the calendar) at Qatar, and because of its late start time it meant that it should have been broadcast at around 10am Australian time, which would have been perfect as I had the day off work due to Easter Monday and could have watched it, however the weather gods intervened which meant the race was pushed back to the Monday night, this resulted in a broadcast time of 4am. As much as I love watching the MotoGP I wasn’t going to get up at 4am to watch it.

Stoner easily took the win ahead of the factory Yamaha’s of Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo. Rossi finished 7.7 seconds adrift with Lorenzo a further 9 seconds back. Colin Edwards cam in 4th giving Yahama 3 of the top four positions, Italian Dovizioso in 5th was the first Honda across the line. The other Australian Chris Vermeulen finished 7th on his Rizla Suzuki, while team mate Loris Capirossi was the only man not to finish the race after crashing on lap 8.

I personally was expecting a lot from Stoner’s new team mate, Nicky Hayden, especially after how poorly Marco Melandri had gone last year after joining the Ducati team. He finished 12th, but this was still a decent effort considering the size of the crash he had during qualifying on Saturday. There was the possibility that he wasn’t even going to race, and had the race run (as originally planned) on Sunday he may not of, the extra day might have worked in his favor.