What a weekend of racing we’ve had! The action-packed Canadian Grand Prix, the unbelievably close Le Mans 24 Hours and of course, the MotoGP round at Silverstone.

This week I’m joined by Damien Smith and Rob Widdows who help me analyse as much racing as possible in 18 minutes!

As always, let us know your thoughts.

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Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

OK, I’m back.

Apologies for the silence but it proved to be somewhat tricky to send dispatches from the Grande Festival de Classicos at Portimao, this being due to the internet service suffering from intermittent failures without any warning. We, that’s the man from Autosport and I, considered demanding our money back, but we’d had such a good time at this terrific historic event in Portugal that we struggled on in silence.

Thankfully we were able to file our stories on Sunday night. Otherwise the editor in London would not have been impressed. Suffice to say, this is one of the highlights of the historic calendar, along with Goodwood, Spa-Francorchamps and Monza. It is also a highlight for those who participate for two main reasons.

One, most racers like to play golf, and the Algarve coast appears to have more golf courses per square mile than anywhere else in the world. Two, the Portimao circuit is a modern classic. Designed by former bike and car racer Paulo Pinheiro, it is a spectacular challenge for drivers and a wonderful place to watch. There’s a full report in the next edition of the magazine but I do urge you to get to this event if you can.

All in all, quite a weekend for us racing fans. In the media centre at Portimao we could watch MotoGP in Australia, DTM in Germany and the Rally of Scotland – simultaneously on three separate screens… what a remarkable world we live in today.

And that’s not to mention all the football. Not a good weekend for my aforementioned colleague and I. He being a Liverpool fan and I being a Manchester United fan, it would have all been rather depressing had we not had to go outside and write about some great motor racing

There was much talk in the paddock about Mark Webber going to Ferrari next year and about how Valentino Rossi will struggle to get to grips with the Ducati. I’m not saying the former is true, and I’d be surprised by the latter, but both are good things to gossip about at the bar after a day’s racing.

Rumours are rumours until they come to pass. Back in reality, Skoda did another great job in Scotland with yet another win for the talented Juha Hanninen who’s had a fantastic year in the highly effective Fabia. Guy Wilks was fast too, but failed to get to the finish. Only nine cars got to the end of this extremely tough rally. And what about Casey Stoner? A much-needed boost for Ducati and certainly Mr Rossi will have taken note of Stoner’s pace. Not one of the greatest MotoGP events but nonetheless an interesting result, Stoner and Ducati having been much stronger in the last two races. And the win moves the Aussie into third in the championship with two races to go, just eight points ahead of you-know-who…

We move on this weekend to what will be a very intriguing Grand Prix in Korea. The fascination is partly because nobody’s been there before, so all the pre-race data will have come from simulators, and partly because it will be interesting to see just who works best under the mounting pressure. The wire is fast approaching and this season will go all the way. Now is the time to see who can handle what is a very tense situation. Will the Red Bulls get tangled up in internal strife and allow Fernando Alonso to come through? Will the McLarens come good just in time?

These and other questions will be answered by Sunday night. But we won’t have all the answers for another few weeks. Ah, the anticipation… just how racing should be, and has been all season long.

Back soon with more ramblings as winter lurks on the edges of autumn here in England. And it could be an interesting winter. Will F1 testing be restored? Possibly. Will F2 champion Dean Stoneman get a drive at Williams? Will Webber go to Ferrari? Will Michael Schumacher be sufficiently impressed with the new Pirellis and his new Mercedes-Benz?

I’m not making any predictions. Not yet, anyway.

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On Sunday afternoon I saw Valentino Rossi fall off his motorcycle.

I will repeat that.

On Sunday afternoon I saw Valentino Rossi tumble from his Yamaha. He was under no pressure and not in close company with any other rider. He wobbled under braking, turned in and fell to the Tarmac. I blinked.
The BBC repeated this occurrence several times, just in case we all thought we had imagined what we saw on the Bugatti circuit at Le Mans.

Yes, the track was damp, and Rossi had just changed from a wet bike to a dry bike, but you simply don’t expect to see him make a slip in these conditions. The man is human after all. As was Michael Schumacher in his pomp. They all have their days.

Rossi was the first of many surprises in a gripping French Grand Prix.

As with all motor sport, the weather made the whole thing more exciting. Clever tyre strategy helped Rossi’s team-mate Jorge Lorenzo disappear into a huge lead while the recently underrated Marco Melandri came home second for Kawasaki. A tremendous battle for third between Honda team-mates Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso was settled in Pedrosa’s favour on the last lap, the Spaniard pipping the young Italian by less than a second.

Rossi finished 16th and last, two laps behind, after no less than four pitstops to change tyres. Well, they change bikes, but you know what I mean. The battle for the World Championship is, to say the least, very tight as a result of this race on a grey day in northern France. Lorenzo leads by a single point from Rossi and Stoner. This MotoGP racing is so damn thrilling.

I mention all this because I was interested to see how the BBC covers MotoGP in comparison to its new coverage of Formula 1 racing. I was impressed, just as I have been by the corporation’s treatment of the Grand Prix season thus far.

I know little about MotoGP other than it is extremely exciting and makes good TV. I therefore rely on the commentary and the ‘expert’ observers. In both cases they are excellent, Charlie Cox and Steve Parrish helping me to get a very good grip on what was unfolding on the screen. Cox has a nice turn of phrase while ‘Stavros’ is typically pithy and informative. It’s a good team. The Beeb also has the race build-up sewn up nicely. Suzi Perry is just so right for the job, and she seems to be enjoying herself, excited to be in there among it all. In the pitlane Matt Roberts has got it under control – plenty of useful information and in the right place at the right time.

We don’t have a BBC red button, but those with red buttons can watch the qualifying and the post-race chat as well as all the other races for the smaller bikes.

Well done the BBC I say. They’ve taken MotoGP from Eurosport and – for casual viewers such as myself – have done a superb job. They’ve taken F1 from ITV and made it just that little bit better. The Jordan/Coulthard duo was an inspired decision. I mean no disrespect to ITV who handed over an already excellent show. But thus far this season, both F1 and MotoGP have made for great viewing. For me, the bikes edge it on sheer excitement. How do those guys do what they do? Are they mad? Or brave? Or just skilful?

So, The Doctor has fallen from his perch, but only by a single point. The greats always fight back, faster and stronger than before. I wonder how long it will be before Jenson Button is nudged from the podium? He must be due a retirement. And a mistake at Monaco is always costly. Even Ayrton Senna made one of those.

That’s what makes sport so gripping. Ronaldo shoots wide, Rossi falls off, and Button will falter en route to what I hope is his World Championship.

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Having dropped his Ducati for the third race in a row yesterday during the Grand Prix at Misano, Casey Stoner was running out of excuses. After the race he explained that they “took the decision to put one lap on the race tyre in warm-up this morning to get it scrubbed in.”

Apparently they had done this before and never had a problem, but Stoner complained of a major lack of grip early on in the race (that must be why he disappeared into the distance and built up a 3-4 second gap after only a couple of laps). However, he went on to say: “after a few laps it started to feel better and I was gaining confidence but it let go.” So what’s going on?

If you want my opinion Stoner panicked. Like he had done at Laguna Seca, and at Brno. It’s all very well saying that he is always on the limit and therefore more likely to stack it. But isn’t it a little more than a coincidence that the moment that he has lost it, in the last three races, was when Rossi started closing the gap?

The ever-humorous Italian did admit after the race at Misano that he may not have been able to catch the Australian, but crasher Casey wasn’t to know that was he?

So Rossi leaves his home Grand Prix with a 75-point advantage and is set, without any major mishaps, to take the 2008, and possibly his greatest Championship.

Stoner’s quick, as is Rossi. The Ducati is hard to ride right (you only have to look at poor Marco Melandri to see how difficult), but at the end of the day is blisteringly quick. The Yamaha is getting faster, especially with Rossi leading the development, which is only helped by the fact that he is now using Bridgestone rubber, which is so much better than Michelin that at times it’s almost embarassing for the French tyre manufacturer. But the main difference is that Vale has years of experience and in my eyes is just a better rider. And Stoner knows it.

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I wonder if anyone else shares my fascination with this night racing thing? Or perhaps you consider it be an irrelevance, an artifice created merely to increase the television ratings in Europe?

It is an artifice, of course, but a gripping idea as well. Not a new idea, I appreciate, having watched NASCAR night races in the days when you didn’t have to pay a monthly fee for your favourite motor racing channel. Anyway, I lost patience with Eurosport, despite having been their Indycar commentator for a season. It seemed that every time I tuned in for NASCAR or Champ Car all I got was African league football, though that too became quite interesting and made a change from the Premiership. Eventually, however, the shambles of the scheduling, or at least the form in which it reached the TV listings, became too much for me. But I digress.

Night racing, as we know, is coming to Moto GP this weekend and to Grand Prix racing at Singapore in September. And I am fascinated by the challenge, both for competitors and promoters alike. And there are different problems, different challenges, for bike racers and car racers. Let’s take a look at what’s in store at Qatar this coming weekend. Moto GP is exciting enough in daylight, never mind in the middle of a floodlit night in a Middle Eastern desert. And this season looks like being a cracker, with the gifted Valentino Rossi determined to get back on terms with the precocious young Casey Stoner, with Ducati using every last nut and bolt to get back at Yamaha. The fact that the battle is to commence beneath thousands of floodlights can only add to the excitement.

Motorcycle racing at night has its own special demands on the lighting crew. Bikes move around a lot more than racing cars and they change direction in the blink of an eye, so the corners have to be particularly carefully lit. According to a report by Moto GP correspondent Rick Broadbent in The Times, and he should know, each of the top riders has had his own set of problems in dealing with night racing. Honda rider Dani Pedrosa told Broadbent that there were a lot of shadows and it was very tiring on the eyes while Casey Stoner spoke about the importance of confidence in his instinct in the reduced visibility. James Toseland, who impressed in testing last week, said he felt like he’d worked a night shift and the humidity of the hot nights was causing moisture on his visor. Rossi simply observed that it would be better to hold a night race when the temperatures are a little higher, when the night air is not so cold.

This is intriguing stuff. I wonder if some of the Grand Prix drivers will be watching on Sunday when the bikers venture out into the night on the Losail circuit in Doha. They will be facing similar, but not the same, challenges when they get to Singapore in the autumn. The floodlights will not, contrary to popular opinion, re-create daylight. There will be plenty of light, yes, equivalent to lighting up seventy football pitches. But it’s new territory; the first few laps will be into the unknown, the uncharted. It will be interesting to see who performs at their best under the glare of the bright lights of show business. And who is most daring in the shadows.

The whole idea, of course, is to encourage us to sit back on the sofa, at a respectable hour, and enjoy the action on television. And I’m sure many of us will do just that. It will make good telly, both Qatar and Singapore, but I’d so much rather be there. It’s a little bit of motor racing history in the making.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine