With just two rounds left in the 2004 MotoGP championship, the position at the top was interesting to say the least. No points from the last round saw Valentino Rossi's lead drop to just fourteen points over Sete Gibernau with Max Biaggi a mathematically possible but highly unlikely to achieve sixty one points behind the leader. Gibernau has been looking strong for the last couple of rounds and the Honda seems to be an even more refined package than before, so maybe this was going to be the turning point. Who could tell?

The Malaysian round at Sepang is always a challenge to predict. The weather is variable and the highly technical circuit can throw up all sorts of surprises. Rossi won there last year, but that doesn't really mean a great deal.

Qualifying saw a few surprises, as always. Shinya Nakano, who incidentally celebrated his birthday on Sunday, put the Kawasaki on the front row - the first time a green machine has held a front row grid position since Kork Ballington at Imatra, Finland in 1981. One place ahead of him, Alex Barros managed his first back to back front row start since 2002. But the start of the day was Valentino Rossi, who scorched through the field to take provisional pole halfway through the session, confirming it at the end when nobody really threatened to come close at all. Rossi's qualifying lap was the fastest ever by a bike around Sepang. But in fairness, the top seven qualifiers were all inside last year's pole time. Sete Gibernau did his championship hopes no favours at all with a second row start while Max Biaggi, 2002 winner, started from seventh place after struggling with setup. Biaggi's team-mate Makoto Tamada started fifth after an early spell at the top of the tree, with Honda's Nicky Hayden sixth. With Biaggi on the third row were Suzuki's John Hopkins and Yamaha pilot Carlos Checa. Colin Edwards and Ruben Xaus, podium finishers last week, struggled throughout qualifying, ending up twelfth and fifteenth. Top Ducati was Loris Capirossi in eleventh with Troy Bayliss directly behind him on the grid in fourteenth and neil Hodgson directly behind him in seventeenth. Aprilia mounted Jeremy McWilliams, still without injured team-mate Shane Byrne, started eighteenth.

Race day, then. Hot and humid. Not very nice to be zipped up inside your own personal Turkish bath, even with a 200mph cooling breeze. The lights changed and Rossi and Barros took off together, fighting tooth and claw for advantage. For a while it looked as though the Honda rider would best the Italian, but then after four laps it became clear that Barros wasn't going to be up to the task and Rossi began to extend a lead, eventually pulling out some nine seconds over the Brazilian. Further back the pursuing pack of Gibernau, Biaggi, Hayden, Tamada and Capirossi was gaining on Barros. Gibernau, seemed somehow unable to break away or, indeed, to maintain the pace, and Biaggi took over the mantle at the lead of the group, setting about reeling in Rossi's considerable lead.

As the pack caught Barros things closed up a bit before Biaggi surged past in pursuit of Rossi's rapidly disappearing Yamaha. Barros managed to get his head down again and maintain his position though by the end Biaggi was some six seconds ahead of him. Nicky Hayden rode a mature and confident race to finish fourth, albeit ten seconds behind his team-mate while Gibernau, who had looked secure in fifth, succumbed to a last minute surge by both Tamada and Capirossi, coming out of that mugging, just six laps from the end, in seventh place.

Up at the front, Rossi rode a typically masterful race, taking the new lap record on lap eight, over half a second faster than the previous record which he also set last year. And further down the field Shinya Nakano was fighting his way to eighth, just a third of a second behind Gibernau, after a dismal start and mid race. A second behind him, Carlos Checa rode a lonely race to finish ten seconds clear of tenth place Troy Bayliss, enjoying something of an improvement in his recent luck. Colin Edwards rode hard but finished a very disappointing eleventh while Suzuki's John Hopkins retired after just two laps.

Honourable mentions are due to British Superbike refugees Yukio Kagayama, standing in for the injured Kenny Roberts Jnr on the Suzuki, and James Ellison on the Harris WCM who finished fourteenth and eighteenth respectively, and to SBK visitor Garry McCoy, standing in for Shane Byrne on the Aprilia, who finished sixteenth behind Aprilia regular Jeremy McWilliams. Neil Hodgson's dismal season continued as the D'Antin Ducati expired after just six laps.

So what does that do to the championship? it mucks it up for Gibernau, that's for sure. With a thirty point lead, all Rossi needs to do is finish tenth or better in Australia to be guaranteed of the title. The best Biaggi can now hope for is second, but to do that he needs to win in Australia and Gibernau can finish no better than thirteenth. So realistically, Max should look forward to another year with the number three on his bike and Rossi should start making some space in the trophy cabinet.

But this is racing and all sorts of stuff can still happen...

Results

1 V Rossi, Yamaha
2 M Biaggi, Honda
3 A Barros, Honda
4 N Hayden, Honda
5 M Tamada, Honda
6 L Capirossi, Ducati
7 S Gibernau, Honda
8 S Nakano, Kawasaki
9 C Checa, Yamaha
10 T Bayliss, Ducati

Championship Standing after 14 rounds

254 V Rossi
224 S Gibernau
188 M Biaggi
144 A Barros
136 C Edwards
131 M Tamada
109 C Checa
107 N Hayden
94 L Capirossi
75 M Melandri