Valentino Rossi may only have finished fifth at Donington Park, but you wouldn't have known it from the interviews he gave after the event. He was, he pointed out, racing for the win even though he didn't have to. His congratulation of Dovizioso on the slow-down lap apparently consisted of requesting ten Euros for showing him the way 'round for so long. On reflection, Vale later upped the cost of his lesson considerably. He did congratulate Andrea, but everyone was left in no doubt as to what had gone down out there.

The rostrum guys told us how tricky the track was. Dovi explained why he slowed after Rossi's crash then pushed again, but admitted the he can't yet race against the top men under normal conditions. Colin and de Puniet explained why they were happy to have survived rather than disappointed not to have won.

Rossi ended one interview with an Italian TV station with the phrase every racer wants to use: 'It was a great race anyway, because I was the quickest man today.' Or as Kevin Schwantz said after Rossi and Lorenzo's Barcelona epic 'That was about more than five points.' That was about more than a world championship as well. It was about being the top man, the one the rest have to look up at and hate it. Observation leads me to believe that the world title might not matter that much, it's nice to have one obviously, but anyone who saw Schwantz and Rainey, never mind Rossi and Biaggi/Gibernau/Stoner/Lorenzo, knows that they'd be going at it just as hard if all they got at the end was a plastic cup from that tatty shop on the High Street.

As we are at the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's Moon landing, I recently re-read The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe. It is the story of how the first astronauts were recruited and trained. How a bunch of danger-addicted test pilots became passengers on top of a giant firecracker with no control over their vehicle - 'spam in a can' as one put it. They were national and world heroes, but most were uncomfortably aware they were no longer pilots and therefore not the best at their job. Woolfe brilliantly paints a picture of how this gnawed at the new astronauts, and how it was understood by all of them that Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier, the man who could push a fighter plane's envelope further than anyone, was still the best; sat, as Woolfe put it, at the top of the ziggurat on the lower steps of which stood test pilots, fighter pilots and--way down the bottom--ordinary pilots. The parallels with racing are obvious. What happens on track is about Valentino Rossi establishing for all to see that he is still the best; still the one the rest have to look up to; still Chuck Yeager.