Istanbul is the traditional meeting point of East and West, the point where the comfortable familiarity of the West gives way to the strangeness of the orient. And so it is with the Istanbul circuit. Designed by a German, it offers a fiendish combination of fast, flowing sections where courage and a utter trust in the front end count for everything and tight, technical sections where the key is a bike that turns fast and gets the power down well. The out of comfort zone bit comes as soon as you leave the established line. Istanbul is hot and dusty, and the track gets a regular coating of grit, sand and other detritus which collects on the surface and gets blown off the racing line. Drifting onto it will quickly make any rider understand just why it is referred to as 'marbles' by the cognoscenti...

MotoGP has come to Istanbul twice before. On both occasions, Marco Melandri has walked away with the spoils, making this one of the very few circuits at which Valentino Rossi has yet to win. Indeed, with the trouble that Yamaha seem to have had this season, nobody was really expecting him to break that duck any time soon.

Which made practice all the more of an eye opener as Colin Edwards came out of the blocks right at the top of the timesheets in the first session. Both Yamahas, in fact, spent time at the top of the tree, as did Casey Stoner on the Ducati, while Loris Capirossi made a welcome return to form after the safe delivery of his son just three weeks ago. The Suzuki pairing of Vermeulen and Hopkins did some damage at the top as well, but Toni Elias looked particularly threatening, generally being the fastest of the Hondas. Pedrosa and Hayden continued to have mixed fortunes, the diminutive Spaniard doing reasonably well while Hayden continued to struggle in his attempt to retain the number one plate.

All of which counts for nothing when the stopwatches come out for qualifying, of course. Because Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards were both simply unassailable, the former champion setting a scorching time that only his team-mate could even get vaguely close to. Dani Pedrosa tipped things on their heads as well, setting a very credible time and becoming the fastest Honda when it counted. Stoner and Capirossi headed the second row, with a vaguely back on form Hayden finding something and getting sixth. Row three saw Hopkins ad Vermeulen sandwiching Kawasaki's Randy de Puniet, while Toni Elias struggled and ended up tenth. Marco Melandri, by the way, double winner here and Elias' team-mate, had a torrid time, crashing twice on Friday and ending up fourteenth on the grid.

As is usually the case in Turkey, race day was clear, sunny and dry. But not as warm as Saturday. And with the new tyre rules giving a limited number of tyres for the weekend, and more importantly forcing the choice to be made on the first day of practice that could well make a huge difference. Both Yamahas languished down in eighth and ninth for warmup, with Stoner and Elias at the top, followed by Capirossi and the two Suzukis. But warmup isn't the race, of course.

So as the riders lined up for the race it was apparent that track temperatures were going to be an important factor. But perhaps even more important was that coating of grit and sand off the line, making a clean start absolutely essential because overtaking was likely to be a bit of a lottery. And there are very few people who get off the line cleaner than Valentino Rossi, so it was The Doctor who led the pack into turn one, with Colin Edwards riding shotgun for him ahead of Stoner and Capirossi. Rossi's tactics were apparent from the very beginning, as by halfway round the first lap he'd opened a distinct gap and was clearly out to make hay while Edwards did his team duty and held off the rest of the pack. Trouble is, Stoner and Capirossi both managed to slide past Edwards who momentarily dropped a little off the pace and started to pull away. But up at the front, Rossi had already built an impressive gap when, as he turned in for the stomach wrenching flat out right hander at turn ten, the front let go. He caught it and stayed upright, but had no choice other than to run wide, over the grass, onto the concrete infield then back onto the track again. And he came back on behind Elias, all the way back in eighth place. Perhaps that lead wasn't so huge after all.

Then, just one bend later, while everyone was regrouping from the shock of seeing the best motorcycle racer in the world getting it wrong, Olivier Jacque outbraked everyone, including himself, cannoning up the inside and skittling the unfortunate Colin Edwards off and out. Not being a man to do things by halves, OJ also took Dani Pedrosa out quite comprehensively while Chris Vermeulen got flung into the air, his Suzuki landing gently on top of Pedrosa's conveniently placed Honda and sliding to a halt essentially unscathed. Vermeulen lost just thirty seconds picking himself up before getting the Suzuki started and back on the circuit. Pedrosa, Edwards ad Jacques had no such luck though. Edwards walked away unharmed while Pedrosa and Jacques both got taken to the Clinica Mobile for a check over. Happily. both transpired to be essentially unhurt.

So Casey Stoner, having been gifted the lead when Rossi ran off the track, stayed in the lead and kept the hammer right down. The lead group, of course, didn't know anything about the carnage behind them until three quarters of the way around the next lap. But with the shenanigans out of the way, lap one saw Stoner leading Capirossi and Hopkins across the line, followed by Elias and Rossi. Hayden, Melandri and Barros were next, ahead of de Puniet and Hofmann. Now it should come as little surprise to hear that this was not a situation that Valentino Rossi was going to put up with. And sure enough, the Yamaha rider upped the pace steadily, riding a particularly physical race in places, climbing to third after an extremely robust pass on John Hopkins on lap six, then getting ahead of Capirossi a couple of laps later. But Toni Elias, Rossi's bete noir in Portugal last year, was out for a repeat performance and hounded the championship leader relentlessly, eventually muscling past in a carbon copy of Rossi's passing Hopkins earlier on. Hopkins, meanwhile, was having the mother of all battles with Capirossi, later joined by Melandri and Hayden, but the Suzuki rider was acquitting himself well and holding his own against notionally faster and more experienced riders.

Rossi, meanwhile, was closing the gap on Stoner, despite being dogged and actually passed by Elias, and was setting a cracking pace. Then, suddenly, on lap fifteen Rossi dropped from third to sixth, losing two more places in the next lap and then managing to hang on for a bit before being passed again and again, finally finishing tenth behind Alex Hofmann on the d'Antin Ducati and Randy de Puniet on the sole surviving Kawasaki. At the time of writing we're still not sure what went wrong, but from the way he was struggling to get the bike turned and staying on a tight line I'd lay odds on a front tyre problem. Onboard camera footage showed an extremely tired looking rear tyre as well, which won't have helped.

At this point things could easily have become rather static. And to an extent they did, as Stoner extended a yawning gap over second placed Elias. But behind them a great battle was taking place as Melandri, Hopkins, Capirossi and Barros all squabbled over third place. And a measure of just how close and bloody that squabble wasis that on just one short left, right, left complex - the same one that saw the earlier pileup - Hopper and the Suzuki went from a solid third to seventh. Alex Barros was riding like a man possessed, flinging the usuallylacklustre D'Antin Ducati around like he hated it and riding to a miraculous fourth place, having been on the verge of a podium place several times. Capirossi confirmed a total return to form, fighting for every place and riding as hard as we've ever seen and Nicky Hayden seemed to at least get some confidence back after managing to get the Honda, which still doesn't seem to suit him, back into the hunt. John Hopkins rode a fabulous race, losing out purely on bad luck on that corner, while his team-mate Chris Vermeulen recovered well to not only score points but to take the fastest lap after it looked to be all over.

Shanghai comes next. Same circuit designer, same issues with a lack of testing, but a very different environment. The championship is wide open, and today we actually saw some fantastically close, aggressive racing. Maybe 800s haven't killed it completely...

Turkish MotoGP Results

1. Casey Stoner (Ducati)
2. Toni Elias (Honda)
3. Loris Capirossi (Ducati)
4. Alex Barros (Ducati)
5. Marco Melandri (Honda)
6. John Hopkins (Suzuki)
7. Nicky Hayden (Honda)
8. Randy de Puniet (Kawasaki)
9. Alex Hofmann (Ducati)
10. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha)

MotoGP standings (after three rounds)

1. Casey Stoner 61
2. Valentino Rossi 51
3. Daniel Pedrosa 36
4. Toni Elias 35
5. Marco Melandri 30
6. Colin Edwards 26
7. Nicky Hayden 26
8. Alex Barros 25
9. John Hopkins 23
10. Chris Vermeulen 21

SB