"The most important second place of my career," was how Valentino Rossi described this race. "These 20 points are like gold for us." That is an understatement. He now has a 38-point advantage over Jorge Lorenzo going into the penultimate race next week. The threat of Lorenzo was gone before the first corner. Jorge cut to the left from his first second-row start of the year and tagged Nicky Hayden. Lorenzo went down, Nicky went for a long trip across the gravel trap.

From that moment on the race was between Stoner and Rossi. Stoner gave a superb exhibition of controlled aggression and proved again that he was totally justified in taking that break. Every time he braked hard for MG or Honda, he grinned to himself when he didn't feel his arms give way. Rossi tried hard, but was also mindful of not making another Indianapolis-sized error. In the final laps both men were sliding dramatically on the left side of the tyre well ahead of their lonely pursuers Pedrosa and de Angelis. The San Marinese continues to make a good case for his occupation of the final available 2010 saddle, at Scot Honda.

At the back of the grid, we also saw the first effect of the endurance engine rule. Loris Capirossi had to use a new engine, thus losing Suzuki ten points in the Constructors' Championship and consigning Loris to start from the back of the grid. As he's qualified on the one-before-last row, this at least wasn't too much of a problem. Come to think of it, only Kawasaki are behind Suzuki in the Constructors table so that didn't affect things either.