MONTEREY, Calif. — Valentino Rossi won the United States Grand Prix today, giving the Italian rider his first victory at Laguna Seca.

Rossi's 66th career victory stopped defending world champion Casey Stoner's winning streak at three races. Rossi finished the 32-lap race in 44 minutes, 4.311 seconds with a top speed of 97.72 mph to set an event record.

"For sure, the race was unbelievable," Rossi said. "It was a great battle with Casey. It was fun, a lot of fun in this race."

With the victory, Rossi finally conquered one of the two tracks he had yet to win on in MotoGP. The track in Misano, Italy — site of the San Marino Grand Prix — is the only course where Rossi has yet to win since the MotoGP class was introduced in 2002.

"We knew we had to be perfect to win today," said Rossi, whose previous best finish at Laguna Sega was third in 2005. "We made a few changes this morning in warm-up that made us faster in the race."

Stoner, the runaway winner at the event last year and the pole-winner Saturday, finished second in 44:17.312 after crashing in slow turn 11 on lap 24, but remounted to challenge Rossi. Stoner tried to become just the third rider to crash in a grand prix but still win, but Rossi was not to be denied.

Chris Vermulian finished third after a second-place showing behind fellow Australian Stoner last year.

Stoner stills leads championship standings with 212 points, 35 ahead of Vermulian.

American Nicky Hayden, who was third early, struggled with his Michelin tires. He — and others — had been sent wrong tires from Michelin's shop in France. He finished fifth.

"Obviously at my home race I hoped to put up a better fight than this," Hayden said. "It was certainly a tough weekend. We struggled a bit with the tires."