Jorge Lorenzo leads Aussie Casey Stoner at Silverstone on Sunday.

Australia’s Casey Stoner finished second at Silverstone’s sixth round of the MotoGP World Championship on Sunday in the race won by Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo.

Stoner was in the lead group from the very beginning, shadowing Ben Spies in the early laps before moving into first place on lap five. He kept pushing hard, opening a gap of almost one second at one point, but in the end Lorenzo made his way through and sprinted to victory.

Championship leader Lorenzo first took the lead on lap 11, Stoner immediately fighting back. The pair swapped position several times on the next lap, Lorenzo coming out of this skirmish in front and leaving his rival to come under increasing pressure from Dani Pedrosa.

“It wasn’t a great race for us today, we saw the pace the Yamahas had in the early laps and it was really worrying to me,” Stoner said. “As early as lap three the bike wasn’t feeling good, especially on the left side, the tyre destroyed itself almost immediately.

“My plan was to try and get to the front and hold them up, but Ben was proving difficult to pass, then he made a small mistake and I was able to slip through and I tried to hold it from there. We knew we didn’t have a better pace than the other riders and it wouldn’t be long until they were on us, so I did what I could to stay in front.

“We were losing so much grip on the edge of the tyre that we had no mid-corner speed and we were having to make up for this with the entry and a clean exit, which made things difficult. Today we needed a little more grip and we would have been able to fight for the win, but looking at the rear tyres at the end of the race, there was definitely something wrong with ours.”

Lorenzo now has a handy 25-point lead over Stoner following his third race win in succession.

Pons 40 HP Tuenti rider Pol Espargaro claimed his second Moto2 win of the season at Silverstone, ahead of British standout Scott Redding and Marc Marquez. Spanish sensation Marquez leads the title on 102 points, now six points ahead of Espargaro.

Australia’s Anthony West was 27th in Moto2, still struggling aboard the QMMF Moriwaki. A slight change in the seating position in the UK helped, but he admits there are still a number of challenges.

“It is not one problem in particular but a combination of exhaust, body work, air intake and fairing that is just not getting us the speed we need,” he explained.

Blusens Avintia’s Maverick Vinales took over the Moto3 World Championship lead with his third victory of the season. In a race that saw up to 10 riders vying for the win mid-race, it was Vinales who claimed the win from Luis Salom and Sandro Cortese.

South Australian Arthur Sissis rode to eighth, surging forward from 15th on the grid. The rookie is now a promising 12th in the world championship six races into the season. Countryman Jack Miller crashed out of the race in Britain.

The MotoGP circus now returns to the continent for a gruelling run of three GPs on consecutive weekends. The Dutch TT first, on Saturday, 30 June, then the German and Italian GPs.

Click here for detailed results