Estoril in Portugal is one of the more interesting circuits on the calendar. Fast and flowing in places, it also has tight technical sections that suit nimble, sweet handling bikes. Last year Dani Pedrosa astounded everyone by taking his team-mate Nicky Hayden and himself out of the race with a spectacularly ill judged overtake. While I'm sure that's not a mistake the lugubrious Spaniard is about to make again in a hurry, the ghosts of championship cock-ups past are certainly going to be mustering in the Repsol Honda pit. Estoril is also the place where the mother of all battles was decided in favour of Toni Elias over Valentino Rossi, depriving the then champion of five points - exactly the same margin as he lost the title by. So there's plenty of recent history here, much of which will be weighing heavy on their participant's shoulders.

Friday and Saturday practices gave us a strong showing from Casey Stoner, firing his Ducati to the top of the leaderboard and only joined by Valentino Rossi. Oh, and Randy de Puniet. And a surprise showing from both Tech 3 Yamaha riders, with Makoto Tamada second fastest in the second session and Sylvain Guintoli third in the third. As for the rest? Colin Edwards continued to struggle, as much with consistency as anything else, while Pedrosa and Hayden kept out of each other's way while maintaining respectable positions. The Suzuki pairing, unusually, were split with Chris Vermeulen languishing a fair way down the table, struggling with a rare setup problem on the normally very well behaved Suzuki.

Qualifying told a slightly different story, as the line in the sand drawn by Casey Stoner when the young Australian displaced long time pole sitter Dani Pedrosa got scrubbed out by an inspired lap from Valentino Rossi. Then with just a few minutes left, Stoner put in another scorcher to take the lead before again being knocked back, this time by defending champion Nicky Hayden. Then a last minute spurt by Makoto Tamada elevated the Dunlop shod Yamaha to fourth, knocking Pedrosa down one. Colin Edwards managed to get the issues he had sorted out, it seemed, to take sixth while the third row consisted of Marco Melandri, Sylvain Guintoli and Toni Elias. John Hopkins qualified a disappointing tenth, while Vermeulen ended up twelfth, the first rider to be more than a second from pole.

Sunday relieved everyone by remaining warm and dry, ensuring that, if nothing else, at least they all had some tyre data to work with. The warmup passed uneventfully, though Alex Hoffman's D'Antin Ducati died on the formation lap and he had to take his second bike and start from the pitlane..

As the riders waited for the lights to go out it must have been at the forefront of at least two of their minds that a win by Casey Stoner could, potentially, decide the championship with four races still to go.

Lights out and it was Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner who made the greyhound starts, with Nicky Hayden slotting in behind them followed by Marco Melandri and a slow starting Rossi running in his wheeltracks. By the end of the first lap the leading pair had already started to pull out a gap, but a little further back Rossi had shot past Melandri and was all over the back of Hayden's Honda. It took a couple more laps of some serious dicing before Rossi managed to make a pass stick, but a couple of laps later again he was closing the gap on the leading pair in a display of Rossi riding as we remember. Pedrosa was absolutely on fire as he outbraked Stoner at the end of the long, fast start-finish straight and started to try to build a cushion. But Rossi was having none of that as he also did Stoner at the end of the straight three laps later, reeled Pedrosa in and passed him somewhat unceremoniously to take the lead.

Further back an herculean battle was taking place between Hopkins and Melandri while a little behind them de Puniet, Barros, Tamada and Checa were exchanging places and paintwork in a ding dong battle that only finished when Barros and de Puniet both suffered engine failures and Tamada crashed out, happily unhurt.

Back up at the front Dani Pedrosa wasn't just laying down and letting Rossi run away. Exercising a mixture of Honda Power, local support and considerable skill the Spaniard was able to outdrag and then outbrake Rossi, again at the end of the long straight, and take the lead back. A few more laps of dicing allowed Stoner to get dangerously close - close enough that both the lead riders stopped fighting and concentrated in going fast for a while. And Nicky Hayden was on Stoner's case as well. The Ducati rider wasn't having it at all easy this time. Just two and a half laps from the end, after several attempts, Rossi finally managed to pull off the most audacious late braking move of the season, passing Pedrosa while the Honda rider's rear wheel was still in the air and somehow getting the Yamaha turned and back on the power cleanly. A few laps earlier saw Pedrosa outbrake himself at the end of the straight, allowing Rossi through but the Italian returned the compliment just a couple of bends later to drop back into second. The next laps were a blur of sideways action and desperate attempts to close up. But in vain, as Rossi smoked the Yamaha across the line just seventeen hundredths of a second clear of Pedrosa, with Stoner over a second behind and Hayden twelve seconds back, the latter two riders having recognised the futility of pushing harder and the relative security of their positions on the track and eased off accordingly. Marco Melandri prevailed over Hopper, while Carlos Checa led Elias, Capirossi and Edwards home. Alex Hoffman, having started from the pitlane, decided he was too far out for it to be worth his bothering and retired citing a lack of motivation. Staggering, really, when you consider that Sylvain Guintoli had a problem, pitted in, went back out in dead last place (and indeed finished there a lap down) and managed to pick up two championship points.

So while it's hardly blown the championship open, this late in the day resurgence from Yamaha, their fancy pneumatic valve engine and their brilliant rider Valentino Rossi has at least allowed the title chase to remain interesting. Plus the race itself was real edge of the seat stuff, and that's been a while coming. Nicky Hayden broke the old 990cc lap record today as well. That's impressive.

Next round is Japan next week. It's possible that Stoner, with his seventy six point lead, could tie the title up. If he leaves Japan with a lead of seventy five points or more then it's his. But there are plenty of people who want to make sure that doesn't happen...

Results

1 Valentino Rossi (Yamaha)
2 Dani Pedrosa (Honda)
3 Casey Stoner (Ducati)
4 Nicky Hayden (Honda)
5 Marco Melandri (Honda)
6 John Hopkins (Suzuki)
7 Carlos Checa (Honda)
8 Toni Elias (Honda)
9 Loris Capirossi (Ducati)
10 Colin Edwards (Yamaha)

Championship Points after 14 rounds

1 Casey Stoner 287
2 Valentino Rossi 211
3 Dani Pedrosa 188
4 John Hopkins 150
5 Chris Vermeulen 147
6 Marco Melandri 137
7 Colin Edwards 106
8 Loris Capirossi 105
9 Nicky Hayden 105
10 Alex Barros 83

SB