MotoGP: back on track at Silverstone

Valentino Rossi squatted down alongside his Ducati in the garage as qualifying was under way. Something was not right. He went out and came back, down amongst the dead men at the back of the field. His bike was wheeled away, and again, as it was pushed into the box, he squatted down alongside it. Again, looking unsettled, he got on, went out - and came back a lowly 13th.

That was better than Cal Crutchlow: the former World Superbike Champion who has joined MotoGP this season with the Tech 3 Yamaha team alongside veteran MotoGP rider - and also former World Superbike Champ Colin Edwards - had a bizarre accident just three laps into his qualifying session. The front dropped away, he slid off the bike - and as he did so, hit his shoulder hard. Off popped his collarbone - a much less serious break than that suffered by Edwards just eight days earlier in practice in Barcelona but there are fears that he may also have damaged his neck. Word is awaited.

Edwards, despite more than a dozen screws and a metal plate to fix the collarbone he broke in five places was back on his bike: he's complaining that in his crash he landed on his elbow and that resulted in the separation of muscle from his ribs. That, he says, hurts much more than the collarbone.

But as the day started in Silverstone, word came that rain was on its way and by the start of the MotoGP race, the track was wet. Very wet.

Imagine a group of very fast, two-wheeled power boats. That's today's race. The start was a little jumbled but everyone got through. Then again, with two riders out through injury, there were only 15 starters. The MotoGP field is looking so depleted that, on a full-size grand-prix circuit, it's beginning to look a little sad.

The big story is that Colin Edwards, no doubt aided by the fact that a wet race is less physical than a dry race, plugged away and made it to an isolated fifth. Jorge Lorenzo hared off until a wobble allowed both Casey Stoner and Andre Dovizioso past. Marco Simoncelli hounded them. Dovizioso and Stoner had a battle until Dovizioso had to pay more attention to Lorenzo behind him than to Stoner in front of him. Stoner pulled out to two seconds ahead as the battle raged. The Honda has something no other bike on the grid seems to have: front end stability. That meant late braking, even in the wet. The Yamaha doesn't have it and as Lorenzo hit the brakes, he had a high-side that looked nasty. But the rider was fine. The bike, on the other hand, was totalled. Lorenzo's team-mate Ben Spies had come of a matter of minutes earlier, also causing major damage, and injuring his back. News as to the seriousness of that injury is awaited.

Edwards and Stoner both said after the race that conditions were so awful that they wanted the race stopped after about ten laps. By then, they said, the result seemed to be settled.

But it wasn't. That is to say that it was not stopped and the result was not settled. Simoncelli, set up for his first ever podium finish in MotoGP pressed Dovizioso. Time after time, the hiaryone slipped his front wheel into the peripheral vision of the Honda rider (and that's not easy with full-face helmets). Then, when he was not trying an overtaking move, he braked a little too hard following into a corner, the front dived and slid away. He was still travelling in a straight line. A bike in the air doesn't slow down as much as one which is upright with the brakes being applied. Dovizioso turned into the corner and Simoncelli's Honda flashed through the space the other machine had been a split second earlier.

Simoncelli has made some dumb mistakes this season, some of which have put himself and other riders at risk, but this was not one of them. He was far less culpable in his crash than many riders are.

Where Simoncelli came off is at the end of the main straight, where cars have dug small trenches and corrugated the tarmac. Those undulations unsettle a bike being set up for a corner. They also fill with water.

To understand the issues with the front end, some recollection of qualifying is useful: Silverstone is fast. Very fast. Speeds of over 300kph are the norm. Several riders, notably Spies and Lorenzo, braked so hard in qualifying that their rear wheels lifted clear of the ground. In the wet, there were no similar dramatics but the fact remains: there seems to be some kind of issue with the front end of almost every bike on the grid. Simoncelli's crash was in some ways similar (albeit at a different point) to Crutchlow's.

But it is Rossi that will attract some special interest. As the bike sat on the grid, he did not get on board. Instead he squatted down alongside it. This time he was not studying the bike. But nor did he seem to be "getting in the zone," or running through the track in his head. It has to be remembered that Silverstone was used for MotoGP for the first time in a long time last year but that it is a very different circuit to when it was previously used and so the strange dance that riders do as they imagine their first lap is important. But no, Rossi seemed distracted. In every shot of Rossi getting onto the bike this weekend, he did not seem comfortable, physically or emotionally.

Rossi finished sixth, having started 13th. But three of his place-gains were because someone else fell off. Hayden finished two places ahead of Rossi.

Tony Elias - who is having a miserable season - gave a strong showing, which delighted his team who were fed up with him in qualifying after he, yet again, brought the bike home in a carrier bag.

So, while the record books show that Stoner won (which he did with style, bravery and skill - with two laps to go, he started lapping the tail-enders), the stories are more varied. Why is Rossi so discomfited? How does Colin Edwards come back from a major crash and surgery and finish third? What is wrong with the front end of the current batch of MotoGP bikes. And do Simoncelli's stability issues result from his hair being too heavy?

All in all, the main story of the 2011 MotoGP British Grand Prix is this: Barcelona was out of character. MotoGP does still deliver excitement and entertainment in buckets, even if it's bucketing down with rain.