MotoReview

On Saturday Valentino Rossi was the first victim of an oil spill from Alex Hofmann's unhealthy Ducati, which forced the world champ to go out on his number two bike for the remainder of the session. After qualifying a poor ninth Rossi made a great start from the third row, but was then unceremoniously knocked off by Toni Elias in an unfortunate racing incident.

Rossi catches Ellison

Edwards finally finished in 11th, the fastest Yamaha of the day. Rossi tried to fight his way back through the pack on his beaten up number 46 bike and crossed the line in 14th, ahead of only Hofmann and James Ellison.

It's not been a great start for the reigning world champion, who has won the opening round in each of the last five seasons.

Valentino Rossi

"We knew this was going to be a difficult race but maybe not so difficult! I saw Toni come up on the inside and he hit me; this is racing and these things happen. I have known Toni for many years and he is a good rider. He apologised to me after the race so I told him not to worry - only to remember to brake next time and if it is too late then to hit another bike instead of me! Anyway I came back on the track and had a nice battle with Alex Hofmann. I am disappointed because I wanted to win the first race of the season but there is nothing we can do now. Only work hard to make sure we don't have these problems again and look forward to the next race in Qatar."

Colin Edwards

"I probably made the best race start of my whole life, Valentino got away well too and we went together into the first bend. Elias came up on the inside and I actually saw everything happen but to be honest I thought Vale would be able to stay on the bike so I kept my corner speed and tried to just run it around the outside. Unfortunately he went down and I had nowhere to go but the gravel. It really capped the weekend off for us but the truth is that we weren't fast enough to challenge today. This track has been a real pain for us and I can't wait to get away. We've got a test tomorrow but I'll be happy when we get to Qatar, where the bike worked really well in testing."

Davide Brivio - Team Director

"It seems that everything that could go wrong did go wrong for us this weekend. On Friday morning when we needed the time to test it rained and things have gone continually against us since then. We obviously still have a lot of work to do and for some reason our bike clearly doesn't work at this circuit so we are keen to find out why, if we can, in tomorrow's test. The engineers have a lot of data and everyone is working at 100% to find a solution. We were fast at Sepang, Qatar and Catalunya so there is no need to panic and we can look forward to the next race. On a positive note I thought both riders showed character to fight back after the first corner incident and hopefully they will have better luck next time."