Casey Stoner had his worst race of the year at Motegi as he finished sixth and watched his team-mate win, but
emerged as World Champion. And not just any old World Champion but the second youngest Champ ever after Freddie
Spencer and Ducati's first ever Grand Prix champion.

Casey looked good at the start of a race that commenced in wet conditions but the track dried rapidly and for the
first time in MotoGP we had a race held under the flag-to-flag wet-weather rules when the track went from wet to dry, not the other way round.

The shake-up started on the seventh lap when Nicky Hayden was forced in by the weather. By then Stoner and
Melandri were being hunted down by Rossi. The Doc was riding superbly on well worn wet tires and put a hard pass
on Casey at the end of the back straight. Casey was already thinking about going in to change bikes and was happy
to have his mind made up for him by his crew. Marco went in too, leaving Rossi leading and Pedrosa second.

Advantage Michelin--their wets were wearing better on what was now a dry line. Capirossi timed his stop just
right, he went in fifth and two laps after he came out he was first and seeing +10 on his pit board. Randy de
Puniet performed the same trick and despite two early off-track excursions came out of the bike swap frenzy
second.

Advantage Bridgestone.

Then the weird stuff happened. Rossi ran on at the end of the straight and came back into the pits. Pedrosa, the
last man not to swap his bike, went over the handlebars in the final corner and may have broken a bone in his
foot. Rossi waggled the bars and looked down at the front tyre, the crew swarmed all over the bike but sent him
out without changing anything. He kept on running on at the end of the straight and dropped through the field.

Meanwhile third-place Toni Elias was under severe pressure from a charging Sylvain Guintoli on Dunlops.
WTF was going on? Well, Dunlop are not covered by the tire allocation rule so can do what they want, which was
send Sylvain out of cut slicks. The Michelin men were sent out on cut slicks--which of course had to be slicks
from their 31-tire allocation that the tire technicians had modified to comply with the official definition of
'intermediate' (the rules specify a 'land-to-sea' ratio).

Most of the Bridgestone boys went out on slicks.

After the race, Nicky was watching a TV reply with dad Earl and saw Rossi waggling the bars and immediately said
'That's what I thought too, I thought I had a flat!' As Nicky was the first Mich' user home in ninth place I
think it's safe to assume that their cut slicks didn't work as intended. Dunlop only just missed out on a rostrum
as Elias set the fastest lap of the race to make sure of third.

After the race the rostrum men were all delighted, despite them all changing teams at the end of the year. Loris
even stayed to watch Stoner's press conference at which Casey was relaxed, looked considerably younger than his
21 years (a trick he'd forgotten how to perform in recent weeks) and only had one dig at 'people who didn't
believe in me.' He also took a pop at the proposed one-tire rule, comparing it to the BSB's R6 Cup.

There were a few nice moments for those who still like to see a bit of sportsmanship. Stoner's victory t-shirt
names Rossi among his heroes, something Rossi acknowledged by saying if he couldn't win it was nice that a fan of his did. Nicky Hayden made a point of stopping on the slow-down lap to congratulate Casey; 'Just a bit of
respect, he certainly deserves it. Kinda like passing on the flame.'