Motorsport: MotoGP title wide open after thrilling Spanish race

MotoGP continues to deliver racing that other series simply cannot match. For four laps, Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi diced, just inches apart, at more than 200 miles per hour around this blisteringly fast track with long straights and swooping curves.

And blistering heat added to the event: Casey Stoner, ill before the race started, admitted that half way through he had had enough and "gave up." Still he finished third - but was so exhausted he was unable to climb off his bike when he arrived in parc firme, having collected fastest time of the day despite his illness.

Rossi made a do-or-die attempt to dive inside Lorenzo on the last corner of the last lap - the latest in a series of place-swaps that characterised some of the closest racing ever seen. Lorenzo said afterwards that he had seen how far Rossi was behind him and took a conservative line into the final bend, certain that Rossi could not pass him. But Rossi seemed to do the impossible - to straight-line a near-90 degree bend with minimal braking.

With maximum power out of the corner, the front wheel off the floor and the back wheel sliding sideways like a speedway bike, there was no way that Rossi could keep the power on and the bike upright, must less actually on the track. But he did to the jubilation of the crowd who gasped and applauded him despite his finishing ahead of local hero Lorenzo.

With the signing of Hayden to Ducatti increasingly looking like an error of judgement by the Italian team, Yamaha's top two stretched the team competition to the point where Ducatti, now almost totally dependent on Stoner to collect meaningfull results, are almost out of the running.

The next race is in the USA where Hayden has usually done well. But another dismal performance from him there will raise questions as to whether the team should be casting around for a replacement.

Rossi, on the other hand, heavily criticised by the Italian press at the weekend, chalked up another win - his 99th.