The classic conundrum asks:"If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?"  Without settling too deeply into the mire of philosophical speculation, this axiom relates to the idea of objects ceasing to exist when there's nobody around to perceive them. That's the situation that the AMA found themselves in at the running of the Daytona 200 on Friday night. A poor economy, fan indifference and the coldest weather that this reporter has ever seen in northern Florida during bike week conspired to make this year's race the most sparsely attended in, well, maybe ever.

The audience wasn't the only group missing in action. The field was, by some estimates, one of the smallest to take the grid. Eventual winner Josh Herrin said that he didn't have much trouble overtaking backmarkers because the the field was about half of what it was in 2009, the first night running of the 200. Some non-American readers are probably wondering just who the heck Josh Herrin is. This points to another group that was conspicuous by it's absence -- the top riders in  America.  The greatest rider in the history of the series, Mat Mladin, retired at the end of last season to his Australian home, emerging only to toss barbed tweets into the Twittersphere and the other "name" riders are confining themselves to the Superbike series.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Always something of an oddball race, even by American standards, the 200 is the sole endurance type race on the AMA calendar and requires special tactics and equipment not used during the rest of the schedule. In bygone days, that wouldn't stop the best of the best from appearing at the spring kick-off. The 200 was one of the premiere spectacles in  motorcycle racing and world champions would make special pains to appear. People who knew nothing about motorcycle road-racing knew that the Daytona 200 was something special.

In recent times, however, the bloom has been off  the rose. In the nineties, Superbike technology had progressed beyond the point of the tires ability to cope with the extreme demands that the unique track configuration and race length imposed. Attempts to ameliorate this safety issue began with different track layouts and descended to the point where the machinery was downgraded from Superbikes to 600cc Supersport machines. The last indignity on this ignominious fall from grace was the imposition of the Daytona Sportbike class, which, detractors claim, are merely tarted-up middleweight streetbikes.

The creator of the Daytona Sportbike, The Daytona Motorsports Group, is an entity owned by the France family of NASCAR (in)fame that purchased the rights to the AMA series in 2008. The series ran mostly in a business as usual fashion until 2009, when the new owners of the series started changing things. DMG quickly gained the reputation as a contentious, ill-managed entity which managed to alienate and anger all of the major players in the series -- riders, manufacturers and fans -- in one fell swoop. Never mind that the actual racing on the track often times rose above  the squabbling and turf tussling to approach greatness, given the confines of the machinery specification.

The road to hell is said to be paved with good intentions, and some of the DMG's aims were admirable. The idea that the sport should be accessable by a broader spectrum of fan, advertiser and competitor were lofty goals, doubtlessly worth attaining. It was the manner that these systemic changes were to be implemented and enforced that rankled the affected parties. The DMG upper management style was hard-headed, heavy-handed and, at times, arbitrary and capricious. Combined with the world-wide economic downturn, this nearly killed pro-level motorcycle roadracing in America.  Major manufacturers abandoned the series and fan interest was at a low not seen for 20 years or more. Top riders found themselves unemployed or attempting to cast their bread onto foreign waters.

Who Are These Guys?

If someone hadn't been to an AMA race in a few years, the grid for the 200 may have looked to be populated by strangers. While the likes of pole-sitter Danny Eslick, last year's Daytona Superbike champion, series runner-up Martin Cardenas and the defacto factory Yamaha duo of Josh Herrin and Tommy Aquino have been around for a couple of years, most of the top ten qualifiers were virtual unknowns, save for the elderly (by this group's standards) Steve Rapp, who won the 200 in 2007 and long-time privateer Michael "Barney" Barnes.  None of the top superbike riders were entered for the 200, unlike past years where one was likely to see a Bostrom or DuHamel or whomever on the grid. 

The Art of War

8 pm Friday evening saw the field lined up in ~40 degree temps. Thankfully, the AMA has gone back to a conventional starting grid, disposing of the much reviled flying "safety car" starts. When the flag dropped,  the field surged forward only to see 4 riders crash in the first turn, suffering from the effects of too much speed on cold tires on a cold track. Second-place qualifier Martin Cardenas, on the Monster Energy/Roadracing World GSXR 600, quickly followed suit in turn three and the race was red-flagged less than a half-lap in.

 A repeat of last year's multiple red-flag, safety car jumbled debacle was avoided however and the field re-gridded barely 15 minutes later, minus Cardenas, whose crew had been unable to repair his Suzuki in time to make the start.  Roadracing World Suzuki's Danny Eslick jumped the start before the gun, but was able to stop his Suzuki, and thereby took advantage of the new "kinder, gentler" start rule that gives race management the freedom to forgive such a transgression if the offender doesn't gain a competitive advantage.

Seven riders, including Herrin, Tommy Aquino, Eslick, Rapp, Project 1 Yamaha's Dane Westby, Pascal Picotte Racing's Brett McCormick and Aussie Dave's Kev Coghlan were all within a second in a take-no-prisoners battle with 3,4 and 5 riders wide on the banking that prompted track announcer Chris Carter to exclaim that the race was "all out war!"  The Yamaha backed efforts of Herrin, Aquino and Westby with their hordes of technicians and spares were in marked contrast to the McCormick, Rapp and Spanish and European Supersport champion Coghlan's decidedly privateer efforts, a situation that diminished the three's drive not one little bit.

Aquino's Yamaha was jetted overly rich which caused it to belch fire out of the exhaust like a flame thrower and forced him in to the pits, nearly out of gas, 2 laps earlier than the rest of the lead pack.  The release valve on Aquino's quick-fill refueling can stuck open, flooding the Graves R6 and the pit box with gallon after gallon of hi-test race gas, which ended his night. After all the initial pit stops were done, Herrin and Westby came out ahead of Eslick and Rapp by a gap of 6-8 seconds.

Herrin, showing no ill effects from a collision he had in the pits with a fire/safety vehicle before practice that saw him clutching his left shoulder in obvious pain, and Westby continued their bare-knuckles brawl until Westby lost 2 seconds on the last pit, which, despite his concerted efforts, he was unable to make up on Herrin, who was running 1:50 second laps and sliding his rear Dunlop well into the latter stages of the race. Herrin, resplendent in his new stars and stripe leathers, took the checkers, the winner of the 2010 Daytona 200.

Hope Springs

As stated earlier, very few fans were in attendance to see the race. Which is all, to put it mildly, too bad, really.  If you managed to be at the track on Friday you were witness to some of the best racing the 200 has seen (at least in the first two-thirds of the race) in a long while. Combine that with the recent efforts of the AMA to make amends to it's competitors and major players for it's heavy-handed managerial tactics, including a purge of the ruling junta, professional roadracing in America appears to have a much brighter future than it did mere months ago. The climate has changed so much that there's even talk making the 200 a Superbike race again. One can only hope. 

Spring. The very word implies motion. Hope springs eternal. Spring forward, fall back. To a motorcycle racing fan, spring implies the kind of motion that we live for -- the beginning of the racing season. Never mind that, in Australia, February is more like late summer -- the excitement the follows the start of a major series transcends mere geography.

The World Superbike championship came into the traditional opener at Phillip Island with questions to be answered and a giant hole to fill. The questions all revolved around the vacuum left by departing champion Ben Spies. Pundits have been working overtime as to ascertain which of the dozen or so potential race winners would accede to the vacant throne. We got some answers from the first round, namely, that until further notice, the championship is wide open and it ain't over 'til it's over.

Race One: Got a Rocket in my Pocket

Polesitter Leon Haslam, aboard the Alstare Suzuki GSXR,  jumped out to an immediate lead, trailed by the Dynamic Ducati Duo of Michel Fabrizio and Noriyuki Haga and stayed there until the finish that saw Haslam take his first WSBK race win. Pretty simple (and boring) right? Not exactly. Haslam endured close pressure from the Xerox Ducati teammates the whole race, until the very end when Fabrizio made a move coming out the last corner and almost beat Haslam to the line. It was so close, in fact, that official timing had declared Fabrizio the winner; then a photo finish was declared. Inspection of the image snapped at the  line revealed that Haslam had beaten Fabrizio to the stripe by the thickness of his front tire -- a mere 4 thousandths of a second, the closest finish in WSBK history.

Haga, feeling the effects of a 150 mph collision with Ruben Xaus in that morning's warm-up session that destroyed his Xerox Ducati and injured his right forearm to the extent that it required a pain-killing injection, finished less than a second behind the leading pair. Xaus, claiming that he felt "disoriented" after the accident, failed to appear on the grid for the race. Others have intimated that the reason for the nonappearance might have been a lack of confidence on Xaus' part or something as prosaic as a lack of spares precipitated by Xaus' 4 crashes.

Back in the field, lap 2 saw James Toseland highside coming down from Lukey Heights and Chris Vermeulen and Cal Crutchlow lowside in the Honda Hairpin on laps 3 and 5 respectively. Vermeulen's crash apparently forced the throttle wide open, grenading the engine on his ZX-10. Toseland aggravated a broken bone in his hand incurred in an earlier practice crash. The Sterilgarda team blamed both crashes on the inability of the new traction control system to cope with the increased power of the 2010 R1.

Ten Kate Honda's Jonny Rea overcame a CBR1000RR that was "a little bit off", according to Ronald Ten Kate, to hold off Alitalia Aprilia's Max Biaggi, Alstare Suzuki's Sylvain Guintoli and Althea Ducati's Carlos Checa to take a hard-fought fourth.

Race Two: A Spaniard in the Works

The second race started much like the first, with Leon Haslam jumping out to an early lead. Haslam's Alstare Suzuki teammate Sylvain Guintoli harried the Pocket Rocket and took over the lead on lap 6. The two would eventually swap the lead 4 times over the course of the race. Also in the mix were the two Xerox Ducati riders and Althea Ducati's Carlos Checa, aboard what is widely considered to be the closest "customer" bike to the factory Ducati machines.

Checa had been going well all weekend but got a poor start which put him well down in the field. The man formerly known as the Careless Chucker took advantage of a softer tire than the one he had used in Race 1 to advance quickly through the field, catching the lead pack about half-way through the race and dispatching Michel Fabrizio and Guintoli with three laps remaining. The Spaniard then stalked Haslam until near the end of the last lap and overtook the young Brit to take the lead and the win, the first for the Althea squad.

Jonny Rea, Max Biaggi, Leon Camier, Max Neukirchener and Matteo Baiocco all had off track excursions and Jakob Smrz and Chris Vermeulen crashed out of the race. Vermeulen's lap 7 crash was a particularly scary affair that saw the MotoGP refugee endure an horrendous high-speed slide through the gravel before narrowly avoiding being jammed into the tire wall by his careening ZX-10. Vermeulen escaped with a badly bruised right leg and a damaged finger. With Vermeulen's crashes, Tom Sykes'  and Matteo Baiocco's retirements, It was a bad day to be green. American Roger Lee Hayden had the dubious honor of being the sole Kawasaki to finish race two, albeit in last place.

Anticipation

The 2009 World Superbike season has been one for the ages. Close racing, victories snatched from the jaws of defeat (and vice-versa), heartbreak, triumph and an against-all-odds comeback from near-Palookaville. The ultimate protagonists were the stuff of central race-film casting: The lovable but aging hard-luck veteran who has been oh-so-close to the brass ring nearly too many times to count pitted against the hot young kid, a tall, cool Texan with a thousand mile stare.
 
As if according to a Hollywood script, our heroes came to the last round of the year in a virtual dead heat for the championship. All the ingredients for an epic confrontation were in place. Winning was essential, failure not an option. At the end of the day, one would saunter off into the sunset wreathed in victory and one would have the bitter ashes of defeat lingering on his palate, but they both would have fought the good fight and have acquitted themselves with honor.  Unfortunately, real life has a way of being a bit more prosaic than what we would crave. Today's races, while hardly unexciting, were just that sort of reality check.

Race 1 -- All Fall Down

An executive summary would show that Ben Spies jumped out to an early lead and stayed there the whole race and took his fourteenth win of the season. It wasn't nearly that easy. Max Biaggi, hurting from his Saturday crash and 250 foot slide on his back, harried Spies until just after halfway when Ten Kate Honda's Jonny Rea Joined the party and kept Biaggi occupied with Shakey Byrne hooking up with the pair with about 7 laps to go.

Noriyuki  Haga got a good start and had advanced from tenth place to sixth by the first split and moved into fifth when Leon Haslam ran wide. Haga's race and year unraveled five laps into the race on a tricky downhill left where he simultaneously lost the front of his Ducati 1098 and the World Championship that he has sought for the last 13 years. Haga was having trouble getting the bike turned during qualifying and reportedly had the choice between a front tire that stuck well but was resistant to turn-in and a nimbler harder compound that had a reputation for letting go with little warning. Haga made his choice the one from column "B" and that tire lived up to it's advance billing, tucking in on hard braking and depositing the Xerox Ducati rider into the kitty litter, never to return.

Spies' strategy then changed from win at all costs to being consistent and "not doing anything stupid" in an effort to keep the Roman Emperor behind him, because he knew that the extra five points for the win would be crucial.  Spies task eased when Jonny Rea caught Biaggi and the pair battled for the second step on the podium, a conflict the young Ulsterman won midway through the penultimate lap. Haga's disastrous bin reversed the two top men's fortunes and left Spies with a fifteen point cushion.

Race 2 -- A Little Too Little, A Little Too Late

The start of race two saw Shane "Shakey" Byrne jump out to an early lead followed by Spies. Biaggi, Rea and Fabrizio subsequently got through on Spies, who looked a bit tentative. According to Spies, he dropped back because he wanted no part of a fight for the lead when all he needed was to finish in 6th. What was left unsaid was that the lead pack consisted of a group of bona-fide nutters whose antics had led them and other unwilling victims (including Spies) to grief at various junctures in the past season.

Haga, who had elected to ride his "B" Ducati shod with the softer rubber compound, started his move through the pack halfway through the race and settled into third, behind Fabrizio and Rea. Meanwhile, Spies and Biaggi had become locked into a duel for 5th. Spies would have happily puttered around on his lonesome just quickly enough to maintain sixth place but Biaggi's hairball passing manuevers and subsequent run-offs "really freaked me out".

Rea's tires started to give out toward the end, allowing Fabrizio and Haga through. Fabrizio took the win ahead of his Japanese teammate who also finished in the bridesmaid position in the championship for the third time in his career. Rea managed to trundle home in third, followed by Byrne and Spies, whose fifth-place finish left him with a six point cushion that earned him the 2009 World Superbike championship in his Rookie year.

Denouement

It's a shame that either Haga or Spies had to lose the championship. Both earned our respect and admiration for their talent, bravery and conduct both on and off the track this season. We fans have the memory of some great racing to carry us into the winter months and the inevitable bench racing to inflame our passions and keep us warm. However, there's always next year to look forward too. I, for one, can hardly wait -- it oughta be good.

From the blustery shores of Phillip Island, the MotoGP paddock have headed north into the tropics, swapping Australia's chilly spring for Malaysia's hot and humid northeast monsoon, packing away their quilted jackets and retrieving their lightest cotton shirts once again.

The contrast is not just in the climate, however. The two tracks could hardly be more different, in just about every way imaginable. The Phillip Island circuit sits well away from civilization, at the edge of an island looking out over the great Southern Ocean. Sepang, on the other hand, lies just a handful of miles from Kuala Lumpur, one of the great cities of Southeast Asia.

Matching its isolated location, the facilities at Phillip Island are rather basic, to put it kindly. Not so at Sepang, which boasts ultramodern paddock facilities, large, well-furnished pit garages and an air-conditioned media center, as well as two striking grandstands lining the back and the front straight.

The track layouts are also perfect examples of the difference between the old and the new. While Phillip Island is still based loosely on the public roads which once hosted the racing, Sepang is a purpose-built Tilke-designed CAD masterpiece, with each corner carefully calculated by computer. In this aspect, though, the new simply cannot rival the old, the Malaysian track's complex layout no match for the glorious flowing ribbon of asphalt the rolls up and down Phillip Island's landscape.

Been There, Done That

Complex as it may be, the Sepang circuit holds no secrets for the MotoGP riders. Before the season even started, the riders spent long days putting in lap after lap of testing here, taking advantage of Malaysia's favorable climate to adapt themselves to their MotoGP steeds and find ever-greater refinements to their bikes. Before they even arrive at Sepang, they are intimately familiar with its layout.

That familiarity is extremely useful, for the Tilke-designed circuit, clearly drawn up on a computer, has a couple of idiosyncrasies that can catch out the unwary. It starts at the very first corner: Turn 1 is an incredibly tight hairpin, looping back over 180 degrees before flipping back right into Turn 2. The tightness of that first corner is a magnet for trouble at the start of a race, and coming at the end of a 300 km/h straight, requires a complete recalibration of the rider's brain as they barrel into Turn 1.

The track then flows a little, Turn 2 opening out into Turn 3, before the next real passing opportunity at Turn 4, a sharp right hander. The very long and extended Esses of Turns 5 and 6 follow, before the track heads down towards the second half of the track, and the best places for passing.

Turns 7 and 8 are the first chance riders get to over take, the double right handers offering the brave a gap if they are willing to take it. But more often than not, those corners are used to line up the next chance, the dive into Turn 9, with extra corner speed through Turn 8 rewarded by the chance to outbrake your opponent into Turn 9.

Dive, Dive, Dive!

Two more chances remain, along the long right hander of Turn 13, which tightens up into Turn 14, offering a rider a chance to dive up the inside. But being past at Turn 14 is not sufficient, for that tight right hander leads onto the back straight, and the long run into the final hairpin.

Turn 15 is your very last chance, but like the last corner at Jerez, the wideness of the turn creates a double apex. Here you have a choice, to dive up the inside on the way in, or enter wide and cut back inside on the exit. The problem is that whatever you choose, you leave yourself open to attack, by the opposite strategy to the one you have just selected.

The greatest obstacle at Sepang is the weather, however. Though racing in the tropics means that the track is usually dry during the proceedings, the same can't be said of the riders and pit crews. The sweltering heat sucks the energy out of your body, and that's without the physical exertion of racing a MotoGP bike. Actually racing can leave you exhausted and incapacitated, as Mattia Pasini found out last year. The Italian came in with just over half of the 250cc race gone, and had to be helped off his bike.

The Test

That heat will be what worries Casey Stoner most. Since his return from illness, Stoner has gone from strength to strength, finishing 2nd at Estoril then winning his home Grand Prix at Phillip Island just last weekend. But at both races he had the weather conditions on his side. The temperature at Estoril was very pleasant, while in Australia, it was positively chilly. Prior to his break from racing, Stoner's mystery illness manifested itself most intensely in the heat of the summer at Barcelona and the Sachsenring.

After Estoril, and especially after Phillip Island, the Australian said he had never felt better after a race. Sepang will be the ultimate test for Stoner, though. If he walks away from the race in Malaysia feeling as tired as, say Rossi or Lorenzo, then his recovery will be complete.

With the championship gone, Casey Stoner has only one goal: To win the remaining races this season. That may prove to be a problem, however, as both Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa have pronounced that this, too, is their objective. Lorenzo has now finally given up on winning the 2009 crown, despite the fact that mathematically, he is still in with a chance. But the math requires Valentino Rossi to help by either crashing out or finishing way down the field, neither of which looks like being a realistic prospect.

And so Lorenzo has switched his focus to winning, and he intends to start at Sepang. But along with Casey Stoner, Lorenzo will have to beat Dani Pedrosa, as the Repsol Honda rider has declared that he must at least match his previous years' haul of two victories this season. Pedrosa needs another win to go alongside his victory at Laguna Seca, and Sepang is his first shot. The Spaniard has always performed well here, and so whatever the state of the factory RC212V, he is a factor to be taken into account.

Come In Number Seven

Then of course there's Valentino Rossi. The Italian is close to clinching his 7th MotoGP title, and his 9th championship in total. A 4th place finish would be sufficient, but Rossi wants to do it in style. It's hard to celebrate a championship by finishing 4th, Rossi told the press before the event, and expressed his determination to be on the podium, preferably on the top step.

So Sepang looks like being a showdown, with each of the Fantastic Four determined to win for their own reasons. Who wins is anybody's guess, but in the end, it will come down to who is willing to risk the most. Dani Pedrosa has the least to lose, as the 4th man in the championship, but he will face a still-angry Stoner. The 2007 World Champion isn't finished making his point that he was right to skip three races in the middle of the season, and wants a couple more wins to make his message perfectly clear.

With Lorenzo wanting wins to wash away the taste of defeat in the championship, and Rossi wanting to take his title with dignity, it seems unlikely that all four of the Aliens will finish the race in one piece. Someone will be tempted to take a risk, and the rider who dares to be cautious could eventually emerge the victor.

Behind the Fantastic Four, battle resumes for the title of Best of the Rest. But the engine regulations are starting to be a factor in that fight, as the teams are left to select the best of the five engines they have been allowed to use since the race at Brno.

Metal Fatigue

Loris Capirossi may have made the wise decision here. The Italian took a penalty at Phillip Island and was put back to the back of the grid, but it allowed him to take an extra engine. Paddock speculation - all we have, for the teams are being more secretive about their engine allocation than even the subject of rider salaries - suggests that Capirossi only took the engine for a single lap or two, and that the Suzuki rider now has a brand new and fresh engine for the race. Sepang is a track where Suzuki has tested extensively, and they may well go better than at Valencia. The Italian veteran could well relegate the regulars in 5th and 6th place to a little further down the order on Sunday.

Monster Tech 3 Yamaha's Colin Edwards could be the main victim of Capirossi's strategy. Both Edwards and James Toseland have been complaining that their engines are starting to get very tired and are down on power. Edwards has already slipped from 5th to 6th in the championship, losing a lot of points when Alex de Angelis took the Texan out in a first-corner incident at Misano. He won't want to be giving up any more points to 5th place man Andrea Dovizioso.

Alex de Angelis will need another result like Phillip Island in Malaysia. The man from San Marino is within striking distance of a deal to stay in MotoGP next season aboard the Scot Honda, but that deal requires funds from the government of the city state that De Angelis calls home. The deal keeps being pushed back day by day, and a poor result at Sepang will not help de Angelis' case.

For Aleix Espargaro, the race at Sepang is unexpected extra testing time. The Spaniard is due to join the Pramac Ducati team next season, but Niccolo Canepa, the man Espargaro is due to replace, is not sufficiently recovered from a skin graft to his right arm to take part. So Espargaro has been flown in to Sepang to ride in Canepa's place, and will face the weight of expectation. Espargaro will be expected to build on his impressive performance at both Indianapolis and Misano, despite this being only the Spaniard's third outing on the Ducati.

Nothing To Lose

The race at Sepang could truly turn into a war of attrition, with riders and engines failing to deal with the heat and the pressure. Valentino Rossi can seal the title here, but will want to do it in style. Ranged against him, the other three members of the Fantastic Four all have little to lose by pushing for the win. With three men going for victory, and the fourth intent on finishing on the podium, something will have to give.

Whether it be through man or machine, the unexpected is likely to happen at Sepang. With the final round of World Superbikes at Portimao to follow, Sunday is sure to be a day filled with excitement for motorcycle racing fans. Things at Sepang may well get off with a bang in the morning, perhaps even literally.

There is an unspoken rule among motorcycle racers: you always ride, no matter what. Broken bones are shrugged off, bruises laughed at and only very severe injury is enough to keep riders off their bikes. There is one exception, and that is one honored more in the breach than in the observance: brain injuries (usually contusions and concussions) and broken vertebrae are taken deadly seriously, and if suspected will make the normally extraordinarily lenient medical staff of the Clinica Mobile hesitate to give a rider the all-clear.

So naturally, when Casey Stoner took two months away from racing to treat an illness that stubbornly refused to be diagnosed despite being examined by a trail of doctors around the world, a blaze of rumors swept through the MotoGP paddock. As there was apparently nothing wrong with the Australian, it had to be something else. Some said he was a broken man, and could no longer cope with the mental pressure being applied to him by Valentino Rossi. Others claimed that he hated Europe and wanted to leave MotoGP altogether, asserting that Stoner's preferred option was to go and race V8 Supercars in Australia instead. Some alleged that the problem was being caused by Stoner's poor diet and exercise routine, the 2007 World Champ surviving on chocolate and vitamins, rather than nutritionally-balanced meals. The most bizarre rumors involved friction within the team, caused by Ducati team boss Livio Suppo having made a pass at Stoner's young wife.

Whatever the real cause of Stoner's problem, opinion in the paddock was almost unanimous before Stoner's return to racing at Estoril. No one who had ever taken time away from racing to recover from a series of vague and poorly-defined complaints had ever returned to their pre-absence form, and, it was feared, much the same fate awaited Casey Stoner. Upon his return, the consensus ran, he might turn up at the front every now and again but he would never be the force that he was in 2007 and 2008. Nobody else before him had, so why would Stoner be any different?

You Talkin' To Me?

At Estoril, Stoner faced down his critics, first in a press conference in Ducati's hospitality unit, and then on the track. After the press conference - which left the media with more questions than answers - the paddock gossip continued, opinions largely unswayed by Stoner's explanations. After the race, much of the doubt was gone. Stoner had run a strong, fast consistent pace, unable to match the scorching tempo which Jorge Lorenzo had laid down, but still good enough to secure 2nd in the race. Still, it was just one race, the doubters said. Running well in one race may be regarded as good fortune, to run well at the next, in Australia, would be definitive.

Arriving at Phillip Island, however, the attention of the press was distracted by the title fight. New life had been blown into the championship at Estoril, after Jorge Lorenzo dominated the race and Valentino Rossi struggled. With the gap now closed to 18 points, the championship was far from over. Three races were left, and the title looked like going down to the wire. If Lorenzo could claw a few more points back in Australia and Malaysia, the title would be decided at the final race of the year at Valencia. And with Rossi's awful record at the Spanish track over the past few years, Lorenzo would be in with a chance of defeating the 8-times World Champion, in a straight fight on the same bike.

Two By Two

Once practice was underway, it became apparent that the tables had been turned. Valentino Rossi was fast from the start, just as he had said he needed to be after the disastrous race in Portugal. His team mate, however, was stricken with illness, a suspected case of food poisoning leaving Lorenzo weakened and unable to concentrate on finding the necessary setup. The Spaniard was struggling, and three quarters of a second off his team mate's pace.

As strong as Rossi was at Phillip Island - and he truly excels here, despite not having won here since 2005 - one man was stronger. In front of his home crowd Casey Stoner was unleashed, staying one step ahead of Rossi from the second session of free practice onwards. The Australian would start his home Grand Prix from pole position, though he had taken it by just five hundredths of a second.

If the gap between Stoner and Rossi was small, the distance back to 3rd place on the grid was much larger. Nearly three quarters of a second separated Dani Pedrosa from Casey Stoner, with Jorge Lorenzo just one thousandth of a second behind Pedrosa. The Fantastic Four had split off into pairs, the Australian and the Italian eying each other at the front, and the two Spaniards set to duke it out behind.

At least that was the theory. As the starting lights faded and the wail of the 800cc MotoGP bikes reached a crescendo, Dani Pedrosa set out to ruin the plot which practice had drawn up so neatly. The Repsol Honda man got another lightning start, his job made easier by starting from the front of the grid. Beside him, Casey Stoner won the drag race off the line from Valentino Rossi, the Ducati slotting in behind the Repsol Honda but comfortably ahead of Rossi's Fiat Yamaha.

Starting Over

While the front row of the grid had gotten a quick and clean start, trouble was brewing further down the order. After getting off the line reasonably well, Jorge Lorenzo suddenly found himself being swamped. Mika Kallio had taken a rocket start, firing forward to draw level with the Spaniard as the pack approached the first corner. Lorenzo drifted left, forced off line by the Pramac Ducati, and towards the tail of Nicky Hayden, who had shot past on the outside.

Unfortunately for Lorenzo, he closed on Hayden just as the American was starting to brake for Turn 1, slamming the front wheel of his Fiat Yamaha into the rear swingarm of Hayden's Ducati and destroying his own front brake and damaging the rear of Hayden's bike. With no front brake, Lorenzo decided he had two choices: run on through the gravel at Doohan, and try to get the bike stopped in the grass on the other side of the Southern Loop, or try to make the corner. He chose the latter option, but that turned out to be the wrong one, Lorenzo's rear sliding out under him and sending him tumbling through the gravel. Jorge Lorenzo's race ended in Turn 1, and his title hopes along with it. The fault, Lorenzo conceded, had been his and his alone.

Nicky Hayden managed to hold his Ducati upright through the gravel trap and across the grass, and the American rejoined the race at Turn 3. But like Lorenzo, Hayden's race was effectively over too. His bike damaged and difficult to ride, Hayden decided to keep circulating in the hope that it might rain, bringing out the white flags and allowing him to change to an undamaged bike. The rain never came, and Hayden was left 25 seconds behind the leaders and losing ground every lap.

Roadblock

Back at the front of the race Pedrosa had his hands full. The Spaniard may have been first off the line, but this merely put him directly in the line of fire of Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi. Stoner buzzed angrily at Pedrosa's tail like a furious horsefly, indignant at finding the orange Repsol Honda in his path. He wasted no time in attacking, diving inside Pedrosa at Honda Corner. But he was in too hot this time around and Pedrosa immediately swooped back underneath on the exit to the corner.

It was clearly to be just a temporary reprieve. Stoner was back on Pedrosa's tail by the time they ran up Lukey Heights, though he was too far behind to attempt an attack. Instead, he regrouped and concentrated on what his next opportunity might be.

Stoner chased Pedrosa down the front straight, closing as they ran through Doohan towards the Southern Loop. The Australian ran fast through Turn 3 again, lining up another lunge through the Honda Corner, and this time he was close enough to slam the door on Pedrosa and his RC212V on the exit of the turn. Stoner now had what he wanted: Clear track ahead and a rider between himself and Rossi, the only man capable of matching his pace.

Valentino Rossi had entirely different ideas. Seeing Stoner get past Pedrosa, he knew he could not afford to tarry. Rossi set about Pedrosa as eagerly as Stoner had, hunting down the Honda through Hayshed and up Lukey Heights. There he worked his MG magic, running round the outside over Lukey to dive ahead into MG corner, putting a block pass on Pedrosa to ensure he stayed ahead as they flicked back left again for the two long left handers leading back onto the straight. Rossi was cleanly past into 2nd, but his lead was minimal. As they headed across the line for the end of the 2nd lap, Pedrosa drew almost level, but coming into the braking zone for Doohan corner he was forced to yield. Rossi was free to give pursuit to Stoner once again.

Being passed by Rossi did not mean that Pedrosa's troubles were at an end. Alex de Angelis, who had got past Mika Kallio on the first lap, was trailing what remained of the Fantastic Four and had latched onto Pedrosa's exhaust. The Gresini Honda man followed Pedrosa around the track for the first few laps, but Pedrosa's pace was just beyond what De Angelis could manage without overstretching himself. On lap 5, De Angelis had to let Pedrosa go, and both the Repsol Honda man and the Gresini rider were forced to ride their own pace, a long and lonely race looming ahead of them.

Where The Action Is

Behind De Angelis a real race was starting to unfold, with Toni Elias, Mika Kallio, Randy de Puniet, Andrea Dovizoso and Colin Edwards slugging it out for 5th in a no-holds barred knock-down-drag-out brawl that would last most of the race. James Toseland, desperate for a good result, tagged along on the back of this group for a while, but the Yorkshireman's luck remained as dismal as ever. The Monster Tech 3 Yamaha rider was called in for a ride-through penalty, punished for moving while the lights were still red. Toseland rode through shaking his head in disagreement and fury, but even a protest by team manager Herve Poncharal couldn't help. Toseland may have jumped the start, but the infraction was barely visible, and certainly brought the Briton little advantage. Such has been JT's year.

Toseland's team mate was having better luck. Having muscled his way to the front of the group, Colin Edwards quickly took over 5th and left the rest behind. Edwards' pace was much quicker than the Hondas, Ducati and Hayate which made up the chasing pack, and Edwards headed off in pursuit of De Angelis. But the time the Texan had taken to cut through the battling bunch had given the man from San Marino a head start of 5 seconds. It was to be a long and lonely chase that Edwards had ahead of him.

At the front, Valentino Rossi's chase was a good deal less solitary. Once past Pedrosa, the Fiat Yamaha man had closed down Stoner and sat snugly in the exhaust fumes of the Ducati. At first it looked like Rossi was simply biding his time, waiting for his chance to pounce, but as the laps progressed, it was clear that this was deceptive. When Rossi did attempt a pass on Stoner, he was obviously pushing beyond the limit, sailing into Doohan and the Southern Loop barely in control, only just hanging on to his Yamaha M1.

The Italian was being forced into trying in the first part of the circuit because Casey Stoner had Rossi's favorite passing place - round the outside over Lukey before diving up the inside at MG - firmly under control. Rossi was blisteringly fast up the hill and then down dale, but Stoner was just as quick. No advantage could Rossi gain through the back part of the track, and so he had to switch tactics.

The Hard Way

And so he turned to turns 1 and 2, but his switch was costly. Each attack that Rossi placed here was met with an immediate response from Stoner, and the two stalked each other round the track for lap after lap. On lap 19 Rossi threw caution to the wind, and having cut the gap to the Australian he tried once again. He ran hot round the outside at Doohan, hitting the rumblestrip on the exit early, almost level with Stoner and seemingly perfectly placed to hold the inside line through the Southern Loop, grabbing the lead in the process. But Rossi was running too hot, The Doctor having trouble keeping his M1 off the grass and on the curbstones, the bike shaking and weaving violently beneath him. The attempt was too much, and Casey Stoner held on to the lead easily, Rossi losing half a second and forced to start the process all over again.

For the remainder of the race, Rossi went about building his next attack a good deal more circumspectly. With Lorenzo out, scoring points was more important than taking victory. Rossi closed on Stoner a couple of times, but each time decided attacking was too risky, settling instead for 20 points. Nearly three quarters of a second behind the Australian as the crossed the line to start the final lap, Rossi gave up his pursuit and took the points.

He's Back

One lap later, Casey Stoner crossed the line triumphant. The Australian had taken victory at his home Grand Prix decisively, though only by the skin of his teeth, pulling out all the stops to keep Rossi behind him. Stoner had run a special Australian-themed livery at Phillip Island, his bike and leathers predominately white with traces of red instead of the other way round. In the post-race press conference, Stoner thanked Marlboro for allowing him to run the color scheme, an unusually public mention of the sponsor and a peace offering to the company which had been so vocal in their criticism of his decision to take the time off to recover from his illness.

But Stoner's victory was a vindication of that decision, and he said afterward that this was probably the most special victory of his career. In just his second race back in the saddle, Casey Stoner had proved that being away from the sport does not necessarily rule you out from ever being competitive again. In fact, Stoner said that he had never felt better after getting off the bike than he did at the end of the Australian race. Given the strength of this performance, that must be a very sobering thought for his competitors.

Valentino Rossi may have been forced to settle for 2nd but he was not too unhappy with his result. It was the hardest he had ever had to fight for 2nd place, he said after the race, and the way he had barely managed to hang on when trying to pass Stoner confirmed just how tough a race it had been. Taking 2nd place at Phillip Island was not so much a decision for Rossi as a necessity.

The points Rossi took in Australia, capitalizing on the misfortune of his team mate, swung the championship pendulum back firmly in The Doctor's favor. Rossi increased his championship lead to 38 points over Jorge Lorenzo, and took a very firm grasp on his 7th MotoGP title. If Rossi finishes 4th at Sepang next week, the title will be his.

Dani Pedrosa crossed the line a lonely 3rd, once again over 20 seconds down on the leaders. Pedrosa's irritation with Honda is starting to rise to the surface once again, and the Spaniard made some implicit criticism of the state of the RC212V after the race. The 3rd place was all that he had been capable of, Pedrosa said, finishing in that position for the third time in a row. It shouldn't be possible that he keeps finishing 20 seconds behind the leaders, Pedrosa told the Spanish press. The series now heads to two tracks where Pedrosa and the Honda have traditionally done well, and the Spaniard will be hoping for better things at Sepang and Valencia.

Same Again, San Marino

Alex de Angelis crowned a very strong 4th place finish in typical fashion. The Italian pulled a huge wheelie to celebrate as he entered the front straight, but wildly misjudged his position. He drifted left, approaching the pit wall at an alarming speed, and only just managed to put the front wheel down and miss hitting the wall, kicking up a cloud of dust in his pit crew's faces. De Angelis' 4th place was exactly what he needed, as his representatives, along with representatives of the cash-strapped Team Scot Honda team are due to meet with the authorities from the San Marino tourist authority, in the hope of raising enough funds for De Angelis to race the Scot Honda bike next season.

Colin Edwards had got by the group chasing the man from San Marino too late. By the time he was past, he was 5 seconds down on De Angelis, and could only managed to cut the gap to 3. Afterward, Edwards described his race as a bit of a snoozer, but soporific or not, his 5th place finish consolidates his reputation as the best of the rest.

Like Edwards, Andrea Dovizioso managed to slip away from the group too late and rode a similarly lonely race to finish 6th. Dovizioso continues to test Ohlins suspension on his RC212V, but a 6th place finish behind two satellite bikes is not really satisfactory for the factory Repsol Honda rider. Improvement is needed, both for the bike and for the rider.

Marco Melandri and Randy de Puniet were all that was left of the group that had been slugging it out in the early part of the race. While the rest of the riders left them to it, either inching away from the front or dropping off the back, the Hayate and the LCR Honda kept sniping away at each other, swapping places to the line. In the end, Melandri came out on top, taking 7th place and his best finish since Donington.

A Long Way From Home

Mika Kallio had dropped off the back earlier, and came home disappointed in 9th. The Finn complained of a tire problem on his Pramac Ducati, the front showing extremely heavy wear. Kallio is likely to be joined by next year's team mate Aleix Espargaro at Sepang next weekend, and will need to be on his toes not to get beaten by the Spaniard.

10th place in the race went to Toni Elias, also complaining of a tire problem. The Phillip Island circuit is extremely hard on tires, but tire problem or no, Elias did his bid for the Scot Honda - his if his current team mate Alex de Angelis doesn't secure the ride - no good at all. Elias will need more from Sepang.

The two Suzuki riders came home in 11th and 12th, Chris Vermeulen beating out his team mate Loris Capirossi in a dismal outing at their bogey track. Suzuki have always run badly at Phillip Island, and despite a special test here earlier this year, they struggled again. The trouble the team is in was illustrated by the fact that Loris Capirossi had to start from the back of the grid after already having run through all of his engine allocation, using a 6th engine in just 5 races. With 2 more to go, Capirossi may become a regular fixture at the back of the starting grid.

Gabor Talmacsi had one of his better races on the Scot Honda, but he continues to struggle. Talmacsi only just managed to take 13th place ahead of James Toseland, after Toseland was forced to take a ride-through penalty, losing 20 seconds in the process. The Briton was furious after the race, refusing to believe he moved and fuming at the harshness of the penalty. 2010 has been a very difficult year for Toseland.

Nicky Hayden cruised around at the back of the field, nursing his damaged Ducati home for a solitary point. The rain he had been waiting for never came, and he was lapped by Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi with just under two thirds of the race gone. This is the third race that Hayden has been bumped off the track through no fault of his own, and the Kentucky Kid will have to hope for better luck at Valencia, the next left-handed track he excels at.

Best Served Cold

When Casey Stoner took the decision to miss three races, MotoGP followers immediately declared his career was effectively over. No one had ever come back from a situation like Stoner's ever before, and the parallels with Freddie Spencer and Manuel Poggiali were all too clear.

Nobody bothered to tell Casey Stoner, though. The Australian came back strong at Estoril, but at Phillip Island, he was almost imperious. Stoner was close to his 2007 form once again, rarely off the top of the timesheets and lapping fast, smooth and gloriously in control. Stoner appears to be a law unto himself, the exception that proves the rule. And this must worry the remainder of the Fantastic Four, for with Stoner back to full fitness, he is going to be a very hard man to beat indeed.

Even though the real story of the race was Casey Stoner's return to dominance, another important piece in the championship puzzle fell into place at Phillip Island. Jorge Lorenzo made what he described as a rookie mistake, and paid the price. You can't win the race in the first corner, the old saying goes, but you can certainly lose it there. Lorenzo may have lost more than just the race, he may also have lost the championship.

A New Error

Lorenzo's misfortune underlines the strangeness of the title fight this season. It has truly been a comedy of errors, the momentum in the championship changing hands repeatedly as first one rider then the next made a costly mistake. Jorge Lorenzo crashed at Donington, then at Brno, handing Valentino Rossi a 50 point advantage. Then Rossi crashed at Indianapolis, cutting his lead in half again.

Badly botching his setup at Estoril, the Italian cut his deficit even further, to just 18 points. And here at Phillip Island, Lorenzo tried to make up for a poor weekend in the first corner, and handed Valentino Rossi another 20 points on a plate. Rossi now takes an almost unassailable lead into Sepang, a track he has always gone well at. But this is 2009, and seemingly anything can happen. He could wrap up the title in Malaysia, or he could find himself just 13 points ahead. The rule still holds: If you want to win a title, you can't afford to make mistakes.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the heart of MotoGP lies in Europe, and more particularly, in Spain and Italy. Most of the teams are based in one of these two countries, the riders are overwhelmingly from those two Mediterranean countries, and at least a passing knowledge of either Spanish or Italian - the two are similar enough that knowledge of one will allow you to get by in the other - is an absolute prerequisite for survival in the MotoGP paddock.

But MotoGP's Eurocentric nature begs an important question: Why fly a couple of hundred tons of equipment halfway around the world to race at an unearthly time, when the series' major television audience is still safely tucked up in bed and fast asleep after what is usually a very lively Saturday night in Barcelona, Madrid, Rome or Milan? Why on earth would a series which has its heart around the Mediterranean fly all the way to Australia, and close to that distant continent's most southerly tip at that?

The Edge Of The World

For anyone who has seen the track at Phillip Island, or watched a race at the circuit, the matter needs no explanation at all. Despite being perched on the very edge of Australia - or perhaps because of it - Phillip Island is probably the greatest motorcycle racing circuit on the planet, and certainly the finest track that the MotoGP series visits still left on the calendar. The track balances on the edge of the world, located beside the Bass Strait with only Tasmania between the runoff at Siberia and the great Southern Ocean.

The reason for the track's greatness is that it has been largely left untouched. The layout of the circuit is mostly unchanged since its construction in the early 1950s, taking the place of an earlier 10 mile circuit which had staged racing since the late '20s. The layout is therefore fairly simple: fast sweepers connected by a few short straights and a couple of tight corners, all flowing up and down the rolling hills of Phillip Island where once public roads ran. Yet this simplicity produces a thing of exquisite beauty; from the first corner to the last, the Phillip Island circuit challenges tires, machinery and riders equally, and has managed to generate some of the most exciting racing ever seen in the past couple of decades.

It all starts at the end of the front straight, where the riders blast towards Doohan corner at close to 300 km/h. The terrifying thing about that first corner is you can't really see it: The ground drops away at the end of the straight, and all you see from under the bubble are the foaming waters of the Bass Strait stretching off to the distance. It feels like you will fall off the edge of the world if you miss your braking point, yet Doohan is one of the best places to pass on the brakes. That first corner is truly a test of will.

If you do get passed at Doohan corner, there's plenty of time to get back. A rider brave enough to hold the outside line will find themselves on the inside for the Southern Loop, and in position to take back any places lost going into Turn 1. Another high-speed test of courage at Turn 3, where the wind which buffets the coast will either blow you off line or blow a seagull into your path, before the tight, nasty Honda Hairpin, and then heading back out towards Siberia and the Southern Ocean.

In The Flow

Once out of Siberia, the track enters the best part of an already superb circuit. Flowing downhill and up, past the Hayshed and on up to Lukey Heights, before plunging downhill to MG, the tight right hander that acts as a chicane. That run up to Lukey Heights and down to MG is a thing of magic, and if you can unlock the key to that corner, you can own the race. Take the usual racing line, and you may find yourself outwitted, as a braver, wilier opponent holds the faster outside line, braking later through Lukey before plunging down into MG to make a block pass, robbing you of the momentum necessary to build up through the crescendo of lefts that lead back onto the straight. But misjudge that outside line and you find yourself too fast into MG and already running downhill, the weight of the bike pinning the front tire into the circuit with no more margin for correction, leaving you either to run way wide into MG and off the track, or force the already protesting tire to turn and risk folding the front, leaving you down in the dirt and your pride badly stung.

Get MG right and it's a matter of holding the gas pinned as hard as you dare through turns 11 and 12, the bike gathering speed and the rear sliding as it is heated beyond endurance, launching you along the front straight and across the line, still ahead of your challengers and preparing for their next attack, sure to come at Doohan once again. For all of the many MotoGP fans that long for the days of the tire-smoking 990s , those final left handers are their fix, where sliding the rear is still the fastest way through the corner, the spectacular aligning with the practical once again.

Man On A Mission

Although flying halfway round the world to go motorcycle racing may seem a little eccentric to most Europeans, for 2007 World Champion Casey Stoner it's just another day at the office. Stoner's return to racing at Estoril two weeks ago was stunning, being fast all weekend and finishing 2nd in the race after snapping his footpeg in the early laps of the race. Afterwards, Stoner told the press he thought he could have been able to fight for victory if he hadn't made that mistake.

At home in Australia, on a track he loves and has won at for the last two years in a row, a track which suits the Ducati extremely well, and now quickly returning to full fitness, Casey Stoner has to be the odds-on favorite to win his home Grand Prix. Stoner is still piqued at the criticism he has received - Wayne Gardner was the latest in a long line of famous names to question Stoner's absence from racing - and he rides best when he is angry. Stoner will have plenty of opportunity to vent that anger on Sunday.

Valentino Rossi might actually be happy for Stoner to win on Sunday. The championship leader has grown increasingly worried about the rate at which his team mate has closed the gap in the points over recent weeks, and was livid after problems with the setup of his Fiat Yamaha saw him struggling to finish 4th in Estoril, while Jorge Lorenzo went on to win the race and claw back 12 valuable points. If Stoner wins, then even if Lorenzo gets ahead of the Italian, the number of points Rossi would lose would be fewer than if Lorenzo were to take victory.

But that is not Rossi's style. Usually, the way that The Doctor responds to a bad weekend is by coming out fighting, and his domination of the first session of free practice was testament to this method. Though Casey Stoner is likely to be a hard man to beat on Sunday, Valentino Rossi will be doing his utmost to do just that.

Despite protesting that he has nothing to lose, Jorge Lorenzo will be worried at Phillip Island. The Australian track is one of Rossi's favorite circuits, and a track that the Italian always goes well at. Lorenzo, too, has won at Phillip Island, and he referred to his crushing victory in 2007 at the pre-event press conference. But a bout of stomach problems on the first day of practice has held Lorenzo back, and the Spaniard is a second off the pace set by his Fiat Yamaha team mate. Jorge Lorenzo has 3 races to score 19 points more than Valentino Rossi, and with Rossi on a mission at Phillip Island, his quest may get off to a rough start.

The last - though not least - of the Fantastic Four will pose a problem for all concerned. Dani Pedrosa is fast at Phillip Island as well, and got off to a strong start during practice. Pedrosa could well end up being a factor in the title fight, and getting in the way of a Rossi vs Lorenzo duel, taking points from one to favor the other.

By The Left

The Fantastic Four could be joined by another man at Phillip Island, for Ducati's Nicky Hayden always runs very strongly at the Australian track. With the circuit consisting of a lot of long, fast left handers, Hayden's dirt track background gives the American a little bit extra at Phillip Island. So far, Hayden is still off the pace, but if he can find some improvement to his setup he could be a surprise contender on Sunday. Last year, he was on the podium at Phillip Island. That's probably a step too far on Sunday, but he could give the rest a run for their money.

Of the rest of the field, one or two names stick out as likely to cause an upset. First up is Alex de Angelis, at Gresini Honda. The Italian has been steadily improving over the second half of the season, gaining consistency though not losing some of his impetuousness. De Angelis is still auditioning for a ride next season, and is currently engaged in a battle to obtain a ride with the Scot Honda team in MotoGP, though he has also been linked with the FB Corse project. The man from San Marino was 4th quickest on Friday, and looking strong.

The other riders sure to feature near the front are the men from the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha team. Colin Edwards has regularly been the best of the rest, and his 5th fastest time on Friday is where he has been all season. But team mate James Toseland was closer to the pace than he has been for a long time, and is racing at a track where he has historically excelled. Toseland's mission is to beat his team mate in a straight fight at least once before the season is out, and preferably improve on his best ever MotoGP result of 6th. The Briton, who is headed to World Superbikes next season, was 6th here last year, and will give everything he can to beat that mark on Sunday.

A Long Way To Go

The jet lag, the seagulls, the changeable weather, the ramshackle facilities; all these things make you wonder why MotoGP bothers going to Phillip Island. But once the bikes hit the track, all doubt disappears. The Phillip Island circuit remains the best track still on the calendar, and it's fast and flowing layout has so often produced close and thrilling racing in the past. With so much at stake in the championship, the battle between Lorenzo and Rossi should be another epic, neither man able to afford to concede a single point to the other.

But that epic battle is likely to be lost, several seconds behind the eventual winner. Casey Stoner is a fearsome prospect at Phillip Island, and it would be a foolish MotoGP fan who would bet against him. Stoner is on a mission, to prove to the doubters and critics that they were wrong, and even Valentino Rossi will have trouble dealing with Stoner in that kind of vengeful mood. It is going to be a fascinating race come Sunday.

The 2009 MotoGP season has seen the advent of a remarkable period in motorcycle road racing. For the first time in perhaps twenty years, there are not one or two riders dominating the championship, but a grand total of four. On any given day, at any given racetrack, any one of Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Dani Pedrosa or Casey Stoner can win, sometimes by a few hundredths, sometimes by a few seconds.

What is even more remarkable is the gap these four have over the rest of the field. Check each rider's fastest lap of the race at a particular circuit and the fifth fastest man is inevitably well over half a second slower than the leaders. While the leaders finish within seconds of each other, the race for fifth usually takes place half a minute or more behind the winner.

So dominant have Stoner, Pedrosa, Lorenzo and Rossi become that they have spawned a veritable avalanche of nicknames: the Aliens, the Untouchables, the Fantastic Four, the list goes on and on. And because there are four of them operating at such a peak of performance in terms of talent, application and fitness, each must push himself to the limit not to get left behind by the other three, and come sailing back down to Earth with mere mortals such as double World Superbike Champion Colin Edwards or former 125cc World Champion Andrea Dovizioso.

Then There Were Three

The stress of having to push to the limit and beyond just to keep up was what was blamed by many, both inside and outside the paddock, when the Fantastic Four lost one of its number. After suffering stomach cramps, vomiting and extreme fatigue at Barcelona and at subsequent races, and after initial medical tests failed to yield a conclusive diagnosis, Casey Stoner returned to Australia to sit out the races at Brno, Indianapolis and Misano, and try to pinpoint an exact cause.

Stoner's absence did more than turn the foursome into a trio. The on-track action become more and more a duel between the Fiat Yamahas of Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi, with Dani Pedrosa a distant third. Mistakes by Lorenzo at Brno and Rossi at Indianapolis kept the gap between the two manageable, leaving the title race still open. Thirty points separated the team mates after San Marino, a serious obstacle to Jorge Lorenzo's title hopes, but not an insurmountable one.

So Casey Stoner's return was warmly welcomed by both Rossi and Lorenzo for more than just altruistic reasons. Both men figured that with the Australian back, they could use Stoner's presence to their advantage, putting him between the two of them to gain extra points over their title rival. Casey Stoner had no intention of coming to the aid of either man. "Maybe they won't be so happy after the race," he said to the packed press conference at Estoril which he gave upon his return.

For though Stoner looked happy to be back and much fitter than before his time away, there was still the question of whether he would have the endurance to last an entire race, pushing his bike and his body to the limit for 45 minutes. The first session of practice confirmed that Stoner was fast, and longer runs on Saturday morning suggested that the Australian had the fitness. When Stoner qualified in third, just a few hundredths off Valentino Rossi in second and three tenths of polesitter Jorge Lorenzo, it was clear that the Fantastic were Four again.

Out Of Sight

Yet as the lights went out and the screech of 230 horsepower four-cylinder four strokes echoed through Estoril's packed grandstands, it was the man on the second row who ploughed his way to the front. Dani Pedrosa got the rocket-launch start he always pulls from somewhere and shot through the front row to hit the first corner in the lead.

His lead would not last long though. As Pedrosa entered Turn 3, the Spaniard ran it a little wide, ready to cut back for the second apex of the long hairpin turn. But having dominated every session of practice except for the morning warm up, Jorge Lorenzo was not going to just lie down and let Pedrosa lead. Holding the tighter line through the long hairpin Lorenzo cut inside Pedrosa and into the lead.

With clear track ahead of him, Lorenzo set about the task he had set himself for the weekend. Lorenzo had come here to win and take back as many points as he could in the championship, and his domination of practice had been a step on his way to that goal. Quickly pulling a half second gap, Lorenzo was pushing as hard as he could go.

Best Served Cold

Behind Lorenzo, Casey Stoner had arrived in Portugal with his own set of goals. He had achieved his first target in practice too, proving that he was both fast and could last, at least for ten laps or so. The next goal was to silence his critics, and only a podium would do that effectively.

On lap 1, though, Stoner found himself stuck behind both Valentino Rossi and Dani Pedrosa, while Jorge Lorenzo was pulling away at the front. As the bikes howled across the front straight for the first time Stoner tackled the first obstacle, drawing alongside Rossi and ready to attack on the brakes into Turn 1. But The Doctor was not prepared to give up without a fight. Rossi waited a fraction longer in the braking zone, entering Turn 1 ahead, but after the flick left on the way up to Turn 2, Stoner seized his chance and dived ahead of the Fiat Yamaha, taking over 3rd from Rossi.

While a podium would have silenced Stoner's critics, 2nd would be so much more effective, and finding himself parked behind the Repsol Honda of Dani Pedrosa, the Australian started planning his way past. It would not take too long, Stoner getting better drive out of the final Parabolica corner to fire along the straight and past Pedrosa. The Ducati man was in 2nd, and dreaming of more.

That would mean catching and passing Jorge Lorenzo. Just catching the Spaniard would be hard enough, the special silver and white livery on his Fiat Yamaha seemed to have given him even more speed at Estoril. Getting past Lorenzo would be nigh on impossible.

Stoner pushed on towards the Spaniard, but a broken footpeg hampered his chase, Stoner having snapped the securing mechanism on lap 2 in the fast right flick down the back straight. Unable to use the rear brake of his Ducati GP9 to prevent the bike from running wide through Estoril's tight and twisty turns, the Australian was losing a few hundredths a lap, and Lorenzo was edging away. Stoner eventually worked his way around the problem, but Lorenzo was in unstoppable form.

Lap after lap, the silver and white Fiat Yamaha thundered along Estoril's vast front straight, and lap after lap, he edged away from Stoner. The gap had increased from just over a second on lap 3 to nearly two seconds on lap 12, but Stoner still had Lorenzo firmly in his sights.

While the Australian was concentrating on the Fiat Yamaha ahead, he was still being hounded by a Repsol Honda behind. A mistake on lap 4 saw Pedrosa drop nearly a second to Casey Stoner, but the Spaniard quietly worked his way back towards the Australian as the race approached half distance. Once past the halfway mark, though, Pedrosa relented, and his chase was also over.

Spaceman

Where the pace of Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa slackened off a little as the race entered its second half, Jorge Lorenzo continued relentlessly hammering in laps in the low 1'37s. His two second lead on lap 12 turned into a three second lead on lap 18, and a four second lead on lap 21. As the Fiat Yamaha crossed the line 7 laps later, Lorenzo's lead had grown to over six seconds, and for the second year in a row, Jorge Lorenzo took victory at Estoril.

Lorenzo had come to Portugal intending to claw back as much of his team mate's lead as possible, and he had done his part by crushing the opposition. As if to emphasize his position as one of the Aliens, Lorenzo had come to Estoril with his leathers and helmet painted to resemble the spacesuits of the Apollo program, marking the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's trip to the moon. His victory celebration consisted of doing a creditable impression of walking slowly across the surface of the moon and planting a LorenzoLand flag in the gravel trap. This display immediately prompted one Internet wit to claim that Lorenzo's victory had been faked in a film studio in the desert, as the shadows were all wrong and the flag seemed to be waving in the breeze.

Lorenzo may have believed that he had crushed the opposition, but Casey Stoner certainly didn't feel that way about it. The Australian was elated, taking an impressive 2nd place on his return to the grid, and demonstrating beyond any doubt that he was back and he was fit. In the press conference afterwards, Stoner struck back at his critics, saying that this podium was proof that everyone who had claimed that his illness had been faked or was all in his head were wrong, and that now that he was no longer ill, he was still as fast and as fearsome as ever.

Dani Pedrosa finished a distant 3rd, having run out of steam earlier than Stoner. But by sticking with the Australian for as long as he had, he had limited the damage to his 3rd place in the championship, and still leads Stoner by 3 points.

The last of the Fantastic Four was also the least, Valentino Rossi crossing the line in 4th, some 23 seconds behind his Fiat Yamaha team mate. The reigning World Champion had struggled with set up all weekend, and his crew had gambled on a set up change on the morning of the race, shortening the bike and moving weight around to get the bike to turn more quickly round Estoril's tortuous track. It had turned alright, but the lack of weight on the rear had left Rossi with no edge grip and as a result he could not get on the gas out of corners, spinning the rear as soon as he touched the throttle. In the latter stages of the race, Rossi had been nearly two seconds a lap slower than Lorenzo, and ended up off the podium at Estoril for the first time in his career.

Rossi had lost 12 costly points to his team mate and title rival Lorenzo, and was fuming as he entered the garage. After a lengthy technical meeting with his crew in which he underlined the importance of getting the set up sorted on Friday, rather than ending up chasing their tails on Sunday morning. Rossi's comfortable 30 point lead was gone, and Lorenzo had closed the gap to 18 points, bringing the championship back into reach.

Down To Earth

Further back, and closer to planet Earth, Colin Edwards was the first of the mortals, as he has been so often this year. Another strong and steady ride saw him finish as the best of the rest, which with Stoner back meant in 5th. Edwards heard - officially, though he'd known unofficially since Indianapolis - that Ben Spies would be joining him at Tech 3 next year, and the Texan is preparing for the challenge of handling the talented rookie by demonstrating that he will be no pushover once Spies becomes his team mate.

If the racing at the front had been monotonous, with all passing completed by lap 3, behind Colin Edwards there was entertainment throughout the field. Toni Elias came out on top in the battle for 6th, diving ahead of Andrea Dovizioso with 5 laps to go. Nicky Hayden had led that fight early, but a lack of rear grip forced him to buckle to the pressure Dovizioso and Elias were placing on him, the Kentuckian finally finishing in 8th.

James Toseland ran a relatively lonely race to finish 9th, scoring the kind of result that has caused him to lose his ride this season and leaving him to take Ben Spies' ride on the factory Yamaha in World Superbikes next year. Toseland has struggled all year, and has still not managed to improve his best result in MotoGP of 6th place. He has three more races.

Toseland will be joined in World Superbikes by Chris Vermeulen, the Australian having agreed to join Paul Bird's factory-supported Kawasaki team. At Estoril, Vermeulen fought valiantly with Randy de Puniet, staying ahead of the Frenchman to clinch 10th. Putting Vermeulen's performance into perspective, De Puniet had his boot come open on the first lap, forcing him to slow to close it up again. He then charged past three riders to catch Vermeulen, nearly highsiding off in a failed attempt at passing the Australian and slamming his still painful ankle into the fairing.

Marco Melandri found himself in the unfortunate position of scrapping with Pramac Ducati's Niccolo Canepa for 12th. As the season has progressed, the Hayate has fallen further and further behind, and Melandri will be glad he will be on a factory-spec Honda RC212V with the Gresini team next season.

Last of the 14 finishers was, as ever, Gabor Talmacsi on the Scot Honda. The contrast between Talmacsi and his team mate Hiroshi Aoyama could not be greater. While Talmacsi continues to struggle with the RC212V in MotoGP, Aoyama moves closer to clinching the 250cc title every race, pushing a three-year-old RS250 RW further than it has any right to go. Just how long Talmacsi's money will be good in MotoGP remains to be seen.

Mika Kallio was the first rider out, losing the front in the final Parabolica while sitting in 6th position. Loris Capirossi followed later, after a gear sensor failed putting the bike into safe mode and taking him out of contention. A similar electrical problem left Alex de Angelis sidelined, bad news for the Italian as he is still without a job for next year.

War Of The Worlds

With the Aliens now once again complete, Casey Stoner's return to the fold has added the predicted complication to the championship race. Jorge Lorenzo did exactly what he set out to do, dominate the proceedings from start to finish and come away with maximum points. Casey Stoner played into Lorenzo's hands by achieving his own personal goals, silencing his critics with a powerful display and a 2nd place finish. The real loser this weekend was Valentino Rossi, the magic fix that Jeremy Burgess and the crew usually find on Sunday morning not coming off in Portugal. "Everybody says Burgess always finds something for Valentino on Sunday," Lorenzo said after the race, "But he doesn't always."

Though Casey Stoner's efforts helped Jorge Lorenzo at Estoril, it could have worked out very differently. Stoner reckoned he had the pace to run with Lorenzo in Portugal, and if he hadn't made the mistake on lap 2 and snapped his footpeg he thought he could have challenged Lorenzo for victory. The MotoGP circus now heads down to Phillip Island, Stoner's home track and a place where he has never lost on a Ducati. Jorge Lorenzo may have been wearing a spacesuit at Estoril, but in Australia, Casey Stoner is likely to be the leader of the Aliens.

As the MotoGP paddock reassembles in Portugal after the enforced layoff of the canceled Hungarian round, all of the talk in the paddock will be of one subject: the return of Ducati's prodigal son. And that's a terrible shame.

For the place where MotoGP finds itself is at Estoril, one of the finest circuits on the calendar. The track is a mass of contradictions and ambiguities, best summed up by the old PERL programmer's motto, TIMTOWTDI: There Is More Than One Way To Do It. For the track is both the slowest circuit on the calendar and yet boasts some of the highest top speeds of the year. It has the slowest corner of the season, and a treacherously fast right-hand flick along the back of the paddock.

And it's not just that the corners are so diverse; it's also the lines through them. Three corners truly exemplify this: Turn 4, the Curva VIP; Turn 6, the Parabolica Interior; and the chicane at Gancho, comprising Turns 9 and 10. Turns 4 and 6 are very long hairpins, so long that there are two distinctly different lines through them: the classic out-in-out route through the apex, or the berm route so admirably demonstrated by Toni Elias over the past few years, whereby you hug the outer rumblestrip, maintaining corner speed to fire out onto either the back straight or the run into Orelha, carrying more pace than the riders you were behind when you entered the corner.

The chicane, however, is a beauty, one of the finest of its kind. You can either flick left then right, attempting to maintain momentum, or you can stuff your bike up the inside of the man ahead and execute that fan favorite, the block pass. If you're ahead, on the other hand, you can slam the door on anyone attempting to get under you, forcing them almost to a standstill if they wish to remain on the track.

The schizophrenic nature of the track lends itself to passing, and if a rider is in touch then you can never count them out. There's the obvious point at the end of the front straight going into Turn 1, but then the series of rights which follow allow you to line up a pass, much as at Barcelona. The Gancho chicane is followed by the Esses, and a block pass at Gancho is often followed by a counter attack through the Esses, once the blockee has regained the momentum lost to the blocker. And finally there's the Parabolica Ayrton Senna, a great corner named after a great driver. The long and increasingly fast right hander allows you one last chance to get onto the tail of the rider ahead, and whip out of the draft down the long run to the finish to sneak ahead.

As great as the track is, right now the MotoGP paddock is focused solely on the return of Casey Stoner. The Australian gave a press conference on Thursday evening, which was at the same time both informative and perplexing, with no real conclusion as to the cause of Stoner's health problems, just lots of little clues. Having been off the bike for over two months, the 2007 World Champion is unlikely to run away with the race on Sunday, but he did say that he was feeling better than he had for a long while. Given that prior to Donington, Stoner was managing to be either on or close to the podium despite his illness, the Australian should be at least near the front for much of the race.

The front is likely to consist of the same two, or perhaps three, riders as ever. The Fiat Yamaha Civil War continues apace, with Valentino Rossi the last to gain an advantage, adding 5 points to his championship lead with a victory at Misano. The battle at Estoril looks finely poised: Rossi has never been off the podium here and has won five times at the circuit. On the other side of the garage, Estoril is the scene of Jorge Lorenzo's first MotoGP victory, taken in just his third ever race in the class. With little to choose between the two, the only thing we can be sure of is a close battle, and with a bit of luck Estoril may turn into a repeat of Barcelona. This time, though, Lorenzo will be determined to ensure the result is reversed.

With the Fantastic Four all now back on the grid, the final member of the Untouchables is also likely to feature. Dani Pedrosa lost out to Jorge Lorenzo by just 1.8 seconds at Estoril last year, and the Repsol Honda star will not want a repeat of that. Pedrosa's problem is that though his RC212V has improved significantly over the last few races, it is still no match for the masterful Yamaha M1. Pedrosa will have his hands full coping with the two Fiat Yamahas, but as Lorenzo and Rossi will be more focused on each other than on Pedrosa, the diminutive Spaniard might just be able to take advantage of their duel.

Pedrosa's team mate, Andrea Dovizioso, has other things to worry about. Dovi has taken on the job of test mule for the new Ohlins suspension, while Pedrosa sticks with the familiar Showa springers. Dovizioso had less to lose and more to gain by the switch, and with a full race weekend of experience at Misano behind him, he should be able to make another step forward.

The remainder of the field fall broadly into three categories: Those with new contracts and nothing to prove; Those with new contracts and scores to settle; And those without a contract and desperately looking for one.

Loris Capirossi and Colin Edwards fall into the first category, yet entirely different results might be expected from the two men. Capirossi is working on the improving Suzuki, the Hamamatsu factory beavering away to make the GSV-R competitive for next season, having given up on 2009. Edwards, on the other hand, has a brand new (if much reduced) contract with Tech 3 Yamaha in his pocket, and may decided to back off the pace a little, and get ready for the arrival of fellow Texan Ben Spies in the Tech 3 team next season. But Edwards is still irritated at being dumped in the gravel at Misano, the result of a wildly optimistic first-corner maneuver by Alex de Angelis. He may feel he is owed a result, and go out chasing one.

Much the same can be said for Nicky Hayden, the American looking increasingly optimistic around the paddock. Where early in the season, Hayden was all bewilderment at how to handle the Ducati, the two post-race tests at Brno have given him the clues he needs to improve, and Hayden has moved much closer to the top four than before. He had been hoping to build on his podium at Indianapolis, but Alex de Angelis destroyed his dreams at Misano along with those of Colin Edwards. Hayden will be keeping away from the Man from San Marino this weekend.

Chief of the men with new contracts and scores to settle must surely be James Toseland. The Briton has finally lost his ride to Ben Spies, and is returning to the World Superbike paddock taking the seat that Spies will be vacating. But before he moves back to ride in World Superbikes, Toseland has a point to make. He is still bitterly disappointed in his season so far, especially after making such a strong debut in MotoGP at the start of 2008. So he is plotting his revenge, which can only be extracted in the form of bettering his previous best result, by cracking into the top 5. Given the depth of talent in the series, that's a tough nut to crack, and on the basis of his form so far this year, would seem nigh on impossible.

Though the many seats in MotoGP are nearly all taken, there are still a couple of men in the paddock without a contract for next year. As the season nears its end, riders without contracts get more desperate, and therefore usually faster. The most prominent rider with nothing signed for next season is surely Toni Elias, and Elias has history here. The last time Elias raced in Portugal with nothing signed for the following season, the impish Spaniard produced the race of his life, outfoxing Valentino Rossi to take victory in 2006, robbing Rossi of 5 valuable points, the points he lost the 2006 world title by. A repeat of that victory is unlikely, but with Elias, you can never be sure.

His team mate Alex de Angelis is in the same boat, and after his wild pass at Misano, taking out both Nicky Hayden and Colin Edwards at Turn 2, De Angelis will be out to make amends. The man from San Marino is still not sure where he will end up next season, but he needs to continue his recent run of strong results to ensure he gets on a decent machine. De Angelis, like Elias, will be on a mission. Given the desperation of the pair, we will have to hope it's not a bombing run.

With MotoGP returning to action after a long layoff, the riders will be rusty but keen to get back on their bikes. Valentino Rossi's objective is to play it safe, and not squander any expensive points. He faces a team mate with little to lose: 2nd place in the championship is pretty well tied up, and Lorenzo really needs to win everything if he is to catch Rossi. If he fails, it will not be counted against him, as to fall short to the mighty Rossi in only his second season would be regarded by most riders as a resounding victory. So he might as well give it his all, and see where he ends up. Add in the X factor of Casey Stoner, and a continually improving Dani Pedrosa, and we should have a fascinating weekend of racing. The track is ready, the riders are ready, the fans are ready. It's time to go racing again.

There's just something about Italy and motorcycles. The culture and economy are suffused with the love of all things two-wheel. Chances are, if you are a motorcylist at least a bit of your kit is produced in Italy or maybe your garage is populated by machines that were designed and built by people who have a preternatural passion for motorcycles. Italians love racing, too, and when you combine the two on Italian soil you always have the opportunity for something special. Italian riders feed on this passion and the energy and intensity they absorb makes them try just a bit harder than they might at, say, Sepang or Motegi. Of course, that energy and intensity can have a flip side as well, just ask Colin Edwards, he'll give you a profane mouthful about Italian riders in Italy.

Coming into Imola, 2 riders not from Italy but who have been virtually adopted by the paisanos as their own and whose teams are from the country, came into ths round in a dogfight for the world title. Amercan Ben Spies had clawed back from an 88 point deficit to lead the series by 18 points on the back of 2nd place man Noriyuki Haga's crash in race two at the Nurburgring.  This capped a misbegotten string of mostly mediocre races that saw Haga slipping in the points spread, partly due to injuries to his shoulder and arm.

Race One: Old Age and Treachery

The first race saw Max Biaggi get out to an early lead with Haga stalking him closely until, with three laps to go, the man formerly known as Nitro went by and didn't look back, taking his first win since he doubled at Kyalami in May. Haga's teammate, Michele Fabrizio, had also caught Biaggi and it took last gasp pass by the Roman Emperor in the final chicane to secure his second step on the box.  Fabrizio, who claimed that arm-pump type symptoms had rendered his clutch hand so numb that he could barely feel the bars, took the final podium spot in front of a rapidly fading Ben Spies. Spies, who hung around in the place he would eventually finish, fourth, for most of the race, claimed that electronic settings rendered his R1 so powerless that it seemed like he was "riding a 600" for 21 laps. Final score: Three Italian bikes and two Italian riders on the box.

Race 2: Youth and Enthusiasm

At the light, the Dynamic Ducati Duo of Haga and Fabrizio took off with Aprilia-mounted Max Biaggi trailing in their wake. Fabrizio dispatched Haga about halfway through the race and ran off for his second career win, arm pump apparently vanquished by a liberal jolt of winner's adrenaline. Current 250cc Word Champion Marco Simoncelli, in a one-off appearance for Aprilia, after finally dispatching a pesky Shakey Byrne with Ben Spies in tow, caught a fading Biaggi with 9 laps to go and in a move that redefines the term "hairball pass" forced the Emperor off track, nearly collecting the hapless Spies, who took an unwanted trip through the kitty litter, killing his momentum. Final Score: 4 Italian bikes and 3 Italian riders in the top 4.

Back to Square One

With 4 races to go in the season, we're nearly back where we started, lo those many weeks ago.  Haga leads Spies by 3 points and he looks like the Nitro of old, minus the proclivity to toss the machinery into the scenery at the most inopportune times. Although the majority of the paddock would kill for a 4th and 5th place weekend, it ain't what we expect from Ben Spies. Whether it was a rustiness developed in the three week hiatus (Ducati and Aprilia had tested for two days at Mugello during the break) or an unfortunate recurrence of the rotten Spies luck, the Texan looked, well, flat. Hopefully he'll be back at the front at Magny Cours next weekend so that this shining season can end with the lustre it deserves.

Lately, the flow of racing endorphins has dried up for motorcycle junkies. There hasn't been any bike racing on the world scene since Labor Day weekend (OK, so there has been BSB and *yawn* endurance racing). The sight of once-proud motorcycle journalists posting trivia like a list of the ages of racers as news items is a pitiful one and the most heated topic of discussion is the silly season. Cold Turkey is an ugly experience indeed.

Luckily for us, the drought is nearly over and the World Superbike series will resume this weekend at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, near Imola, Italy. When we last met at the Nurburgring, American rookie sensation "Big" Ben Spies had wrested the lead in the series from Xerox Ducati's "Nitro" Noriyuki Haga as a result of the Texan's win in race one and second place in race two while Haga was knocked went down as a result of contact with Ten Kate Honda's Jonny Rea. At the end of the day, Spies found himself atop the leader board, 18 points ahead of Haga.

With 6 races left in the season, the championship has become Spies' to lose. The Yamaha Italia team tested at Imola last July and Spies was at or near the top of the time sheets most of the time. Spies was also fast at the season-ending Portimao test last year on a bike he'd never seen before. That leaves Magny Cours as the only track that the American has no prior seat time at, not that lack of track knowledge has been much of an impediment to his meteoric rise to the top.

Nori looks to have mostly recovered from the broken wrist and shoulder blade incurred at Donington Park in June. Haga finished a close second to Spies in Race one in Germany and was running at the the front before he was taken out. Haga's Xerox Ducati team mate, Michel "Mr. Fabulous" Fabrizio hasn't provided much of an assist to Haga, other than his failed pass in race 1 at Brno that sent both himself and Spies into the kitty litter.

The most improved rider as of late has been young Ulsterman Jonny Rea who has taken to his Ten Kate team's new Ohlins suspension like a duck to water. Teammate Carlos Checa has had a recurrence of his annual bout of "Checa's Syndrome", a mysterious condition whereby his results get better as contract time nears.

The real news during the hiatus has concerned the Silly Season in both the SBK and MotoGP paddocks. When it was announced prior to the Misano MotoGP round that Ben Spies had signed with Yamaha for 2 more years, Yamaha stated that the team "foresaw" that Spies would be in SBK in 2010 with a possible bump up to the Tech 3 satellite team in MotoGP. Reports in MCN that Spies had committed to appearing in MotoGP in 2010 seem to indicate the tuning fork crystal ball was cloudy and the future is a lot closer than it seemed a few weeks ago.

Spies' departure could and probably will set in motion a veritable domino effect of team restructurings and rider placements in the weeks to come. Most likely, we'll start to see some official movement soon, maybe this weekend. Whatever happens, us racing junkies will be comfortably numb with a fresh supply of our favorite drug.