Pedrosa dominates Czech Grand Prix practice

Spain's Dani Pedrosa dominated both MotoGP free practice sessions here on Friday, beating his Repsol Honda teammate Casey Stoner of Australia ahead of Sunday's Czech Grand Prix. Pedrosa set the day's best time at 1min 56.328 sec in the first session, beating world championships leader Stoner by almost a second on a cloudy, cool morning in Brno, about 180 km southeast of Prague. The 25-year-old Spaniard then clocked 1:56.454 in the second session on the 5.403-kilometre circuit, still leaving Stoner behind by a broad margin on his best of 1:56.831. Italian Honda rider Marco Simoncelli came in third in both rides, with a best of 1:57.136, ahead of defending world champion and last year's Brno winner, Jorge Lorenzo of Spain on a Yamaha. Italy's Andrea Dovizioso of Repsol Honda finished fifth both times, ahead of US rider Ben Spies on a Yamaha. Valentino Rossi, who has five MotoGP victories from Brno, improved to the seventh spot after day one from eleventh in the morning ride. Stoner, the winner of the previous championship race at US Laguna Seca, is leading the championships with 193 points from ten races. The Aussie, who has won five races so far this season, dominated the Brno Grand Prix in 2007, the year he won his only championship title. Lorenzo is second overall, 20 points behind Stoner and 30 points ahead of Dovizioso.