MotoGP: The shocking truth about shocks decides Spanish MotoGP

Marco Simoncelli started the run of accidents individual accidents that saw rider after rider end up in the gravel. Four of the top ten finishers had come off the track at one time or another, to a varying degree of damage. Simoncelli's hig-side looked as if he would end up badly injured: it was a spectacularly bad landing. Fortunately, he was not hurt.

Randi de Puniet managed to slide off half-way around a corner with 11 laps to go but his story is as nothing compared to those of Ben Spies and Colin Edwards. Spies won a titanic battle to catch and pass Dani Pedrosa who began to tire due to his arm injury towards the end of the race. But it was not his arm that affected his pace as much as the fact that his wet weather tyres had shredded their treads and were almost completely slicks. Spies passed him and began to hare away. Then, seemingly all on his own on a straight, he fell off - another bike buried in some of the world's most absorbent gravel. That promoted Pedrosa back to second and Edwards to third. Edwards failed to get the bike turned in and went straight on in one of the most ridiculous retirements ever; the bike was upright. Edwards was sitting on it. The whole bike was on the tarmac except the front wheel which was ankle deep in gravel. No amount of huffing would make Edwards' legs long enough to lift the front of the bike clear so he could rejoin.

And so it went on; Abranam, Cruchlow and Rossi all fell off - and all finished in the top ten.

But it was Rossi's accident with Stoner that decided the order of the race.

Rossi was by far the fastest bike on the track, surprising everyone as he banged in fastest lap after fastest lap and worked his way up the order from a lowly start to third behind Stoner. With total confidence in the bike, he plunged under Stoner in a right hand corner. It was a standard Rossi move: one that no other rider would dare unless he had some kind of escape plan in his back pocket. But we are used to Rossi coming from impossibly far behind, braking later and braking less than his rivals and turning on the power to pull the bike out of the corner and to drag it upright as he chops across the nose of a competitor who had no idea there was a gap, much less a bike in it. But this time, as Rossi stabbed the front brake to set the bike up for exit, the Ducati Front Forks Foul-up struck again. The front dived then slid away and the inevitable happened; Rossi slid into Stoner taking them both out.

Except that Rossi's bike restarted - with the help of the marshals. Stoner appeared at the time to suggest he had not had equal treatment. Rossi eventually finished fifth after a storming ride through the field, suggesting that had he not crashed, he may have been well clear of his former team-mate Lorenzo, the eventual winner.

Rossi made no excuses: as the race finished he went immediately to Stoner's pit and apologised, saying that the accident was entirely his fault. True, but it is important to note that he appears to have suffered from a milder version of the Ducati front end problem that plagued Stoner throughout 2010.

It was in pit lane that the full extent of the heroics by some riders became apparent. Only Lorenzo, who had been able to cruise for much of the race after the Stoner-Rossi collision, had any tread left on his tyres. All the rest of the field had worn all the pattered tread of the tyres - on both the ultra-important side walls and on the upright edge.