MotoReview

This left Dani Pedrosa with the unenviable task of closing in on Rossi and going for the race win. Something that began to look very unlikely as the champ built up a 3.2 second lead and then a near certainty when his Camel Yamaha machine pulled off the track with a mechanical problem (specifically, ‘the engine broke'). After 5 races Valentino is now 8th in the championship with less than half as many points as current leader Nicky Hayden.

A distraught Rossi returned to his motor home and in a later press release was quoted as saying, ‘Now we need to look at it race by race, maybe not think about the championship for a while and concentrate on trying to win as many races as possible from the remaining 12.'

Back on track, Pedrosa was now leading from Melandri, who had worked his way up the order. In third was Loris Capirossi, and both men were closing on Pedrosa as each lap went by.

With four laps to go, Melandri took the lead and then on the final lap Capirossi moved up to second, with Pedrosa settling for third place and 16 points.

Further down the order, Casey Stoner won a good battle with Nicky Hayden for fourth and Colin Edwards took an impressive 6th place after losing a lot of ground following a turn one incident that saw local rider Randy de Puniet down and out before the first lap was over.

Shinya Nakano had a good start to the race, but it turned out it was a little too good, as the Kawasaki rider was soon called into the pits for a jump-start ride through penalty. He eventually finished in 12th.

A semi-rejuvenated Makoto Tamada came 7th and Sete Gibernau, Toni Elias and Chris Vermeulen rounded out the top 10.

It was an especially good day for Honda as Melandri's win meant that they won every single GP race of the day, with Thomas Luthi winning on the 125cc Elit Honda machine and Yukio Takahashi taking the 250cc win ahead of his team-mate.

You can view the race results in full here.