Sachsenring down in the South Eastern corner of Germany, near Dresden is a fabulous circuit. Squeezed into a small area it reminds me of the sort of thing you might have made with a Scalextric set where the amount of track you had rather exceeded the available space. It turns back on itself and forms concentric rings and, well it's not a power circuit, that's for sure. Plenty of corners with varying radii, elevation changes and, unusually, nearly three times and many left handers as right. Oh, and it goes counter-clockwise as well, just to make things even more different.

Practice showed one thing up straight away. In the dry, the works Yamaha's were nearly half a second off the pace while Casey Stoner and the Ducati were right back on form. Stoner took the top spot in all but one practice session, where he was pipped by a couple of hundredths by championship leader Dani Pedrosa. Kawasaki had a thin time, with John Hopkins sidelined through injury and Anthony West nearly joining him after an extremely fast and violent crash left him with a couple of fractured vertebrae on the Friday while a second crash in Saturday's practice wrecked his number two bike as well. Fortunately the team had rebuilt his first machine so the battered Australian was able to continue. Tech3 Yamaha rider James Toseland struggled from the off, trying to learn a new circuit which is very different to anywhere else on the calendar as well as fighting against the weather which changed partway through sessions, robbing the Englishman of valuable on-bike time. His team-mate Colin Edwards was also having to dig deep as the Yamahas seemed not to be working as well as they have elsewhere this year.

Qualifying gave us no surprises at the front, with Stoner a comfortable four tenths faster than runner up Pedrosa. Colin Edwards pulled something special out of the bag to finish up on the front row, just a tenth behind the Spaniard. Row two saw Andrea Dovizioso leading Jorge Lorenzo and Randy de Puniet, while multiple champion Valentino Rossi languished on the third row in seventh place after a truly dreadful session. Nicky Hayden and Shinya Nakano lined up alongside, with Alex de Angelis just pipping Toseland to close out the top ten.

Sunday - race day - made people sit up and take notice. Because it was distinctly damp. The warmup session, on a greasy track, saw Pedrosa take the spoils from Nicky Hayden while Dovizioso and Toseland battled it out for third, the Brit clearly having found something good overnight. But warmup counts for lots psychologically but for nothing at all in the battle for points. Especially when the weather changes as dramatically as it did in Germany. Not to put too fine a point on it, the heavens opened and the deluge arrived. Saxony received what looked like a year's rainfall in a few hours. Those few hours unfortunately coinciding with the racing. But hey - that's what wets were designed for, right?

So lights out and it was Dani Pedrosa who made the holeshot, opening an astonishing one second gap over second placed Dovizioso by halfway round the first lap. Clearly the Spaniard, who everybody used to say couldn't ride in the rain, has been taking lessons. Stoner made a comparatively poor start, winding up third by the end of the first lap. James Toseland, who has always been a strong starter, found himself in fifth place after the first corner after starting eleventh. A few big moments and the fact that he has never ridden a wet MotoGP race before pushed him back down the field a bit, yielding to Lorenzo before the lap was out. Colin Edwards dropped to fourth from his front row start, tussling briefly with Toseland before the Englishman dropped back and the Texan found his rhythm properly. Valentino Rossi maintained his seventh place after getting rather swamped in the melee of the start, but the really impressive first lap was probably that of Sylvain Guintoli on the satellite Ducati. After an horrendous crash in practice, the Frenchman qualified fifteenth but ended up ninth at the end of the first lap. One more lap saw Pedrosa consolidate his lead, at this stage riding nearly two seconds a lap faster than anyone else. Clearly those Michelins were working as well. Stoner passed Dovizioso but wasn't even making a dent on Pedrosa's ever increasing lead, while Rossi had passed de Angelis and Lorenzo and was now climbing all over Colin Edwards' back. Toseland dropped back to eleventh after a series of slides and unpleasant moments saw him passed by a gaggle of riders all vying for places - Guintoli, West, and Vermeulen among them, the Suzuki rider being the only one riding uninjured.

There were enormous puddles and rivers across the track in several places, most especially at the bottom of the hills and on the insides of some of the more extreme corners. Just where you don't want it to be. It was inevitable that there would be fallers, and sure enough early into lap three Jorge Lorenzo slid off into the gravel, unhurt but certainly out of the race. Anthony West, who remember had a couple of big crashes and qualified dead last, had climbed through the field to eighth at this point - an astonishing achievement - while Vermeulen who had qualified fourteenth was now up to sixth and pushing hard, closing visibly on Valentino Rossi who was still apparently unable to pass Edwards and make the break.

Lap five ended with Pedrosa having extended an untouchable seven and a half second lead and everything seeming to settle down. But as the Spaniard tipped into the first corner of lap six the front just washed away and he and the Repsol Honda crashed out hard. Pedrosa hardly seemed to slow down at all as he bounced across the soaking gravel, slamming into the air fence at a wince-inducing speed. Stoner was so far behind that he wouldn't have seen the crash but would obviously have seen the flags and a Honda in the gravel. As Hayden was currently lapping last with a tyre defect, it didn't need a crystal ball to work out who it was. So Stoner dug in and settled down to lead from the front, as he is rather used to doing. Behind him, Rossi finally got past Edwards and then made short work of Dovizioso before setting off in pursuit of the lead. Colin Edwards also slipped past Dovizioso to keep his former team-mate in sight, while behind him an unruly bunch formed with Dovizioso, de Angelis and Vermeulen all engaging in some necessarily delicate argy bargy, settled in favour of Vermeulen who is an unreasonably talented wet weather rider. Anthony West crashed out again but this time was able to remount and continue, albeit with a bike missing bits of footpeg and gearshift. At least this time he knew why he'd crashed, anyway...

Shortly after setting the fastest lap of the race, Marco Melandri crashed out fast but, though looking rather dazed the luckless Italian at least managed to avoid adding injury to his list of disappointments from this dismal season. Meanwhile, further towards the front, Chris Vermeulen had made a successful pass on Colin Edwards, seeming to do it simply by being prepared to brake later and accelerate harder. The huge moment he had a second later seemed to be a reminder that there's only so far you can push your luck. Vermeulen got away with it and held the place, but it was more exciting than he'd have liked I suspect. A couple of laps later and hard charging Alex de Angelis came past Edwards as well, the Texan suffering from loss of rear grip. Though the likeable Yamaha rider rode as hard as he could to stay in touch, he wasn't able to respond and looked to be settled into fifth when the back came round and unceremoniously dumped him on his bottom heading down that flooded hill. Edwards was unhurt but the bike was too badly damaged to continue.

So that was it, really. Stoner and Rossi kept up a constant pace, maintaining their lead over the rest of the field but also keeping a pretty constant gap between themselves. Vermeulen and de Angelis were at it hammer and tongs for the remaining ten laps, rarely separated by more than a tenth of a second though the factory Suzuki always had the edge where it really counted. Dovizioso and Guintoli both rode lonely races, large gaps in front and behind them, while de Puniet rode a steady, consistent and safe ride only to get mugged for seventh on the last lap.

Valentino Rossi now holds the record for the most Grand Prix rides without a break. In 125, 250, 500 and MotoGP, The Doctor has now ridden as astonishing two hundred and two races without interruption, taking the record from his old rival Max Biaggi. Stoner's win is the first at Sachsenring for both Bridgestone and Ducati, though Bridgestone in particular should be very happy at having the top four riders across the line.

The whole shebang has to pack up double quick now to get across the Atlantic to sunny California for next week's Laguna Seca round. Rossi is back at the top after Pedrosa's crash, and the rumour is that the Spaniard has broken a finger and possibly his ankle which will dent his comeback prospects slightly. Stoner is on a roll having won the last three races on the trot but Rossi is going to be hard to beat on one of his favourite circuits. Toseland, Edwards, Hayden and Vermeulen all have impeccable records there, too, though not necessarily in this class. It's going to be great...

SB

German MotoGP Results

1. Casey Stoner (Ducati)
2. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha)
3. Chris Vermeulen (Suzuki)
4. Alex de Angelis (Honda)
5. Andrea Dovizioso (Honda)
6. Sylvain Guintoli (Ducati)
7. Loris Capirossi (Suzuki)
8. Randy de Puniet (Honda)
9. Shinya Nakano (Honda)
10. Anthony West (Kawasaki)

MotoGP standings (after ten rounds)

1. Valentino Rossi 187
2. Dani Pedrosa 171
3. Casey Stoner 167
4. Jorge Lorenzo 114
5. Colin Edwards 98
6. Andrea Dovizioso 90
7. Chris Vermeulen 73
8. Nicky Hayden 73
9. James Toseland 65
10. Shinya Nakano 64