MotoGP 2006 Race Report Results Championship Points Standings

Season 2006 got underway with Ducati men Capirossi and Gibernau leading as they did in qualifying while Valentino Rossi went down at turn three after the rear of his machine was clipped by another rider. Rossi rejoined the race over 40 seconds down on race leader Capirossi. Melandri was running third, Hayden fourth and Stoner fifth while surprise package of qualifying Shinya Nakano on the Kawasaki was running sixth.

Bridgestone had proven to have the edge on qualifying rubber but a full race distance could turn things around in the rubber wars. Bridgestone riders had taken the top three places on the grid for the first time ever. There was also no Honda rider on the front row which was the first time since the Italian GP at Misano back in 1993.

Capirossi's pole position was his seventh pole on the Ducati and the 12th time in his career. Ducati occupied the first two slots on the grid for only the second time with the previous time also being at Jerez when Capirossi and Bayliss took the top spots in qualifying back in 2003. With only three laps down however Ducati's dream start to the 2006 season ended when Sete Gibernau retired to the pits with some sort of mechanical problem. Gibernau's incredible run of bad luck has followed him to Ducati... Amazing as the Italian bikes were the only make in the field that recorded not one mechanical DNF during the whole of the 2005 season... Makes you wonder if Rossi actually does have the ability to make a curse stick to his foes...

No such dramas for Capirossi though as the Italian streaked away from the field to the tune of a full two seconds after only five laps as a Honda horde headed by Nicky Hayden, Dani Pedrosa, Marco Melandri and Casey Stoner in tow.

Pedrosa got the better of Hayden and started to pull a tenth here and there out of Capirossi with 20 laps to run.

Shinya Nakano was stalking Casey Stoner, waiting for the young Australian to make a mistake.

With 17 laps to run Pedrosa had the gap to Capirossi down to only a single second. If Pedrosa should win he will become the youngest ever winner in the premier class, taking the record from Freddie Spencer, who was 20 years 196 days when he took his debut victory at Spa back in 1982. He would also become the first rider ever to win the opening race of the year in the premier class after taking victory in the final 250cc race of the previous season.

Stoner had a new challenger to deal with for his fifth position as the race entered its second half after Toni Elias got the better of Nakano. Stoner couldn't hold the Spaniard off for too long however as the Fortuna man quickly got the better of the young Australian. A couple of laps later Elias went one better to promote himself to fourth place after getting the better of team-mate Marco Melandri.

As the race entered its final third Pedrosa was all over the back of Capirossi and looking to be on course to take a record breaking debut win.

Capirossi was not going to give up that top step on the podium however and he responded to the challenge to keep the young Spaniard a couple of bike lengths to his rear and just out of immediate striking range.

With four laps to run Capirossi looked to perhaps have broken Pedrosa as the Italian veteran extended his lead out to a formidable 7-tenths of a second as time started to run out for Pedrosa to break those records.

Indeed it had as only two laps later Capirossi's advantage had blown out to 1.7 seconds and the Italian looked sure to take victory. Hayden had held down third position for most of the race but a charging Elias was starting to threaten a little in the closing laps but looked unlikely to be able to get close enough to mount a serious challenge for that final step on the podium.

Capirossi took a brilliant win and Pedrosa an equally brilliant second position to make a great impact in his premier class debut. While he didn't manage to take Spencer's record as the youngest ever winner in the premier class he did become the first premier class rookie since Max Biaggi won the race and Noriyuki Haga finished third at Suzuki in 1998.

Rossi's opening lap fall was no fault of his own and certainly cost him any chance of trying to challenge the front runners but looking at the race it seems unlikely he would have made any impact even if not for that unfortunate incident. His fastest lap of the race was only better than ten riders and nearly a full second slower than race winner Capirossi's best lap. Clearly the Yamaha men have much work to do before the paddock unpacks at Qatar in two weeks time.

Suzuki also have much work to do as they were on the dominant tyre brand of the weekend in Bridgestone but they failed to make any significant impact in either qualifying or the race. Puzzlingly though Hopkins' best lap made him the fourth quickest rider in the race but the American managed to finish only ninth. That one quick lap does perhaps give the Suzuki squad some hope for the future, however, Hopkins only recorded that single 1m41.5 while his next best lap was a 1m42.2, a full seventh-tenths of a second slower... Most of his laps were in the mid 1m42s to mid 1m43s, very puzzling indeed... By race end Hopkins was more than 30 seconds down on the race winner and Suzuki team-mate Chris Vermeulen nearly 40 seconds down. In his post race quotes Hopkins complained of arm pump, something he had never before experienced on a MotoGP machine.

Will this strange sequence of results continue at Qatar... Only time will tell...