Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo stormed to ­victory in the Aragon MotoGP to close the gap in the world championship race to 14 points on leader Valentino Rossi.

Lorenzo, second on the grid, got away quicker than Marc Marquez in pole and never looked back with a lead of 2.683 seconds at the end over Dani Pedrosa who just held off Rossi. The Italian pushed hard over the last five laps and got ahead of Pedrosa momentarily on several occasions but Pedrosa responded to retain second place.

It was a disappointing race for world champion Marquez who set a lap record in qualifying to start on pole but crashed out on the second lap.

With four races to go Rossi leads the championship with 263 points from Lorenzo on 249. Marquez is third with 184 points.