Will the real Valentino Rossi please stand up?

John Hopkins summed it up best; commenting on his second place, the best of his MotoGP career, he said that after ten laps he gave up.

He quickly qualified that by saying that he gave up pressing to try and catch the runaway winner Casey Stoner. 'He didn't make a mistake all weekend, said Hopper. Well, if you discount his crash at the end of qualifying, neither did John. It's just that the combination of Casey, Bridgestone tyres and the Ducati is currently unbeatable if they get everything right.

Honda and Michelin derived some comfort from Nicky Hayden's third place although the Champ never really threatened the leaders. He was thirteen seconds back of the winner and although he was close after pushing past Pedrosa on the second lap and thought things were 'looking pretty.'

'Then I got to the straight and realized I was dreaming.'

Dani, who chose an unusual combination of a hard front and soft rear Michelin, walked straight through his pit after the flag without taking his helmet off or talking to anyone.

Over at Yamaha, though, things were also far from happy. Colin Edwards crashed on the second lap, only his third DNF in his Yamaha career. A Colin crash is a very rare event indeed, if he's on the floor it's usually because someone else has messed up. And Valentino Rossi? He says he was suffering from grip problems and got embroiled in a fight with first Capirossi, then Vermeulen and then Capirossi again. At the end he was struggling to stay in front of De Puniet.

Jerry Burgess says that with the 800 formula you need your tires, your rider and your bike all working at full potential or you cannot compete. We have become used to Valentino Rossi performing minor and major miracles to force recalcitrant motorcycles on to the rostrum, but that was never going to happen this weekend. He started from his lowest ever Brno qualifying position and for the first time failed to stand on the rostrum for a race he finished here.

The question everyone is asking but no-one can answer is how much the financial scandal currently surrounding Rossi at home affected him. I asked Loris Reggiani. The ex-250 winner's view is that he had never seen Rossi ride so slow and that on TV and from the side of the track he couldn't see a big problem with the bike. Loris also pointed out that there are 'many stories' on this subject, but it is difficult not to come to the conclusion that Vale's mind wasn't totally on the job this weekend.

And next time it's Misano...